
How the Hiroshima bombing is taught around the world - navikohli
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/06/how-the-hiroshima-bombing-is-taught-around-the-world/
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will_brown
Very surprised that there was no statements/discussion from the Chinese
perspective, as the Chinese probably suffered more attrocities at the hands of
the Japanese than any other country during WW2.

What surprised me most in school (and same with this article) is how much
focus there is on the atomic bombs, when aside from the significance of the
decision itself, the destruction/lose of life is eclipsed by US firebombings.
Here is a website with nicely compiled/displayed statistics of the 67 Japanese
cities the US firebombed and the resulting destruction:
[http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html](http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html)

~~~
scott_s
Fog of War, the documentary that inspired this page, is amazing. If you have
an interest in history, and how powerful people make decisions, I recommend
watching it. It's rare to see someone who once held an office of significant
power be so frank in what they did wrong.

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Steko
There was an interesting Ask Historians thread about Nagasaki recently and the
jist of it was that the decision to drop the second bomb wasn't made at the
highest levels, or rather that it was hazily delegated much earlier and the
call was made by local command. And because of local decisions, the moving up
of the Nagasaki/Kokuro bombing by several days due to weather, makes it much
harder to justify.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c6xai/why_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c6xai/why_did_the_usa_use_a_second_nuclear_bomb_when/csst3n6)

~~~
mason240
>makes it much harder to justify.

Makes what harder to justify?

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cmsmith
>This is of relevance to the question because there are a lot of people who
think the bombing of Hiroshima is justified, but when you get into the
question of Nagasaki it gets more murky. Three days is not adequate time for a
government to make a major decision; it is not really even adequate time for a
government to assess what has happened (whether it was really an atomic bomb,
what the damages were like, etc.).

TFP

~~~
mason240
If the decision was in the hands of theatre commanders it certainly doesn't
make it harder to justify, and in fact deals a serious blow to the "the bombs
were only dropped because of political relations with Russia" meme.

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chestnut-tree
Here's how the BBC has approached one aspect of this topic for school
children: a short animated story told by a survivor of the bomb. I think it's
well done and grounded in a moving personal recollection. It lacks the
surrounding context to the bombing of Hiroshima (but then it's not meant to
address that).

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/33772230](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/33772230)

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pionar
Why is this linking to a Washington Post article that is nothing more than
reposting content from Reddit? How is this not just click-baity spam?

Edit: Original Reddit post:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/3fvjs1/how_is_the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/3fvjs1/how_is_the_hiroshima_atomic_bomb_taught_in_your/)

~~~
allencoin
Well, this guy from the WP posted the AskReddit thread and then made an
article about it... by copying and pasting quotes from reddit users verbatim.

I wish they had at least edited the responses.

~~~
Yhippa
Crowdsourcing your work sure is one way to get it done.

The person to automatically build stories reddit posts is going to make a lot
of money one day. Kind of like the robostories for recaps of sporting events.

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Someone
I think the way children were taught about World War II changed significantly
over time in almost every one of the countries mentioned, in general from very
simple good vs evil view to a more nuanced one.

Because of that, IMO, this list has little value without information about
when the commenters were taught about the bombs.

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xigency
Two related ideas in Japanese culture relevant to the discussion:

Ichi-go Ichi-e, 一期一会, is a 16th century Japanese phrase saying that we meet
each other only once in a lifetime. (Opportunities are scarce.)

And then there are the stories of the three samurai and the songbird.

The samurai are Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu.

Each of them encounters a songbird and wishes to hear it sing.

Nobunaga says, if you do not sing for me, then I will kill you. And he takes
out his sword to slice the bird.

Hideyoshi says, if you do not sing for me, then I will make you sing. Then he
offers the songbird something sweet.

Ieyasu sees the bird and says, if you do not sing for me, then I will wait
until you do sing. He then sits and waits (forever).

There were many ways the allies could have ended World War II in the Pacific
theater. The United States, with the dropping of the atomic bomb, chose to
follow Oda Nobunaga's philosophy. Whether that is right or wrong is its own
debate.

The philosophy of the 16th century samurai is a big thing in Japanese culture
and often an interview question for candidates applying at a company. I have a
limited knowledge of the samurai from visiting Nisshinkan in Aizu when I lived
there. That was a samurai school where young fighters trained who fought in
the civil war.

~~~
mason240
>Ieyasu sees the bird and says, if you do not sing for me, then I will wait
until you do sing. He then sits and waits (forever).

The world had spent several years waiting for the Axis powers to be start
being peaceful. Suggesting that everyone should have just sat and waited for
them to stop waging war goes well beyond ignoring reality.

~~~
merpnderp
Just China averaged 100,000 civilians killed per month (Korea and Indochina
also had a steady massacre of civilians). Waiting for Japan to capitulate
would of had its own serious set of costs.

[Edit changed "murdered" to "killed" to make it less inflammatory]

~~~
hga
Total estimate by the point of dropping the bombs was around 250,000 killed
per month throughout the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, also
including Malaya as it was called back then and Indonesia. That wouldn't
include the previously liberated Philippines, a battle which cost 100-500K
Philippine lives, see for example
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_massacre)

~~~
xigency
Well, the analogy obviously doesn't cover all cases. Certain concessions could
have been made to negotiate a surrender other than demanding unconditional
surrender and for the emperor to resign. Again I'm not a historian, so my
point of view is limited.

Culturally at the time there was a sort of head down stubborn attitude in
Japan. Finding a solution to ending the conflict that fit within the scale of
the violence would still be difficult, but it's hard to consider atomic
weapons as the only way to end it.

Hindsight is always 20/20\. In this case not really. There's no way to know
100% what would have happened, all we know is what did happen.

~~~
hga
Based on this exhaustive study I recently read [http://www.amazon.com/Five-
Days-August-Became-Nuclear/dp/069...](http://www.amazon.com/Five-Days-August-
Became-Nuclear/dp/0691128189) there was signaling we were open to allowing the
Emperor to stay.

History's been my thing since, oh, the early 70s, and in the last half decade
I've been closely studying WWII history, especially in the Pacific, and the
Manhattan Project in general in the last half year or so. Nothing I've come
across suggests there was any better option, if you accept the targeting of
mixed use civilian-industrial areas.

Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, was toast as originally planned,
too many IJA ground reinforcements, and our estimate of the number of
Kamikazes was low, actually 8,000 or so (!). Thanks to the latter, the Battle
of Okinawa was the most costly in US naval history, and it would have been
much worse with their not having to fly so far let alone over the featureless
ocean.

Those who knew about the Manhattan Project were planning on using 5-8 bombs to
make Olympic feasible, and per the above linked book, there was major
discussion about what to do with the 3rd bomb if the 2nd didn't force a
surrender.

Those who didn't know were planning on mass use of chemical weapons....

The Soviets wouldn't have been much help, if ever, in taking the home islands
(who's navy would land them even if they were willing?), but it didn't hurt
how they predictably smashed through the IJA in China when they got started
between the two bombs.

Just letting them starve on the home islands ... very bad, and again, costing
a quarter million lives a month in the sphere outside of the home islands.
East Asia was already enough of an abattoir, 25 million plus lives lost.

As for concessions, besides the fact that we'd pledged "unconditional
surrender", which we indeed backed off of for the Emperor, I'm just not aware
of what specific concessions we could have made that would have likely made a
difference. Especially since unconditional surrender was part of a "never
again" post-WWI attitude (per Tom Lehrer's _MLF Lullaby_ "We taught them a
lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then") we were very
determined that we wouldn't have to do this again. And, you know, we
succeeded, and as I've noted in a previous recent A-bombing discussion, we've
not had another great powers war since then.

~~~
xigency
You're right, that does sound exhaustive.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my unique perspective and experiences without
getting down voted, and I've already lost 2 karma on this discussion.

If you have an interest in the country's culture more than its military
history (or modern military history) you might enjoy some of Alex Kerr's
writing, either _Lost Japan_ or _Dogs and Demons_.

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geoka9
Much of it depends on the person writing the textbook/commentary and their
political affiliation. For example, just yesterday the speaker of the Russian
parliament suggested trying the US for the attacks. I'm pretty sure that the
textbooks in Russia are going to be updated soon to reflect a similar point of
view.

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grecy
As a thought experiment, and to illistrate the point so it really sinks in:

How many Americans were taught in school the White House was burnt down by an
opposing army?

~~~
beering
Is the war of 1812 not commonly taught? We learned about it and how the First
Lady saved some important paintings from the White House. We didn't spend much
time on it relative to bigger wars, but I understood it to be a standard part
of American History.

~~~
Chinjut
I think that is the point: that Americans universally spend time learning
about morally minor damage to an American building, but do not so commonly
devote curricular time to truly considering the awfulness of the large-scale
bombing of Japanese civilians.

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happyscrappy
From the comments:

One of the failures of teaching a balanced history is to ignore what was going
on in Asia in the run up to the war. Perhaps because of our cultural biases,
we focus so heavily on the atrocities of the Nazi's and entirely ignore the
murders, rape, torture, etc of the Chinese, Indonesian, Philippines, Burmese,
and other countries by the Japanese. When we do talk about their atrocities,
we focus primarily on those committed against Caucasians prisoners of wars.

While the ethical aspects of using nuclear devices is important, it is also
important to recognize that imperial Japan was arguably the most brutal and
sadistic colonial expansions of the 20th century. Japan has done an excellent
job of whitewashing their history. The US talks openly about the use of
nuclear weapons. Japan is in a state of denial about their regime. Even the
Rape of Nanking gets barely a sentence in their high school history books.

~~~
honest_joe
Exactly but you will get downvoted to the oblivion because there's too many
japanese,anime lovers that would hit you in the face if you would defend the
bombing.

But these are retarded westerners who have no clue. They deserved every
shrapnel from the bomb and still have not paid the full price to all of the
victims.

HELL THESE japanese denied the free health-care to non-japanese victims. 20
000 koreans died in the bombings. But nobody cares.

Japanese people were and still are a terrible nation. I hope they sink to the
oblivion.

~~~
Panoramix
One of the most racist and misinformed comments I have come across in a while.
You are an embarrassment to Koreans everywhere.

