
Hiroshima (1946) - canjobear
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
======
Hondor
It's funny how war is always glorious from the point of view of the aggressor
and always sad from the point of view of the aggressed (sp?), even when
they're the same person! How we feel depends on who's story we're reading at
the time.

"She had not had an easy time. Her husband, Isawa, had gone into the Army just
after Myeko was born, and she had heard nothing from or of him for a long
time, until, on March 5, 1942, she received a seven-word telegram: “Isawa died
an honorable death at Singapore.” "

In case you don't know what her husband would have contributed to in Singapore
- "between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaya ... were
rounded up and taken to deserted spots around the island and killed
systematically."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_Singapo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_Singapore)

~~~
kristopolous
This reminds me of Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn's story when they were doing
journalism in East Timor:

"Allan suggested we walk to the front of the crowd between the soldiers and
the Timorese, because although we knew that the army had committed many
massacres, we hoped that we, as foreign journalists, could serve as a shield
for the Timorese. Standing with headphones on and microphone and camera out in
full view, we went and stood in the middle of the road, looking straight at
the approaching troops. Behind us, the crowd was hushed as some Timorese tried
to turn away, but they were hemmed in by cemetery walls.

The soldiers marched straight up to us. They never broke their stride. We were
enveloped by the troops, and when they got a few yards past us, within a dozen
yards of the Timorese, they raised their rifles to their shoulders all at
once, and they opened fire. The Timorese, in an instant, were down, just torn
apart by the bullets. The street was covered with bodies, covered with blood.
And the soldiers just kept on coming. They poured in, one rank after another.
They leaped over the bodies of those who were down. They were aiming and
shooting people in the back. I could see their limbs being torn, their bodies
exploding. There was blood spurting out into the air. The pop of the bullets,
everywhere. And it was very organized, very systematic. The soldiers did not
stop. They just kept on shooting until no one was left standing.

A group of soldiers grabbed my microphone and threw me to the ground, kicking
and punching me. At that point, Allan threw himself on top of me, protecting
me from further injury. The soldiers then used their rifle butts like baseball
bats, beating Allan until they fractured his skull. As we sat on the ground,
Allan, covered in blood, a group of soldiers lined up and pointed their M-16s
at our heads. They had stripped us of all of our equipment. We just kept
shouting, "We’re from America!" In the end, they decided not to execute us."

Excerpted from
[http://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/13/amy_goodman_recounts_...](http://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/13/amy_goodman_recounts_the_east_timor)

~~~
studentrob
That's terrible, for sure.

The parent comment is talking about one person who could be viewed as a hero
and a victim, depending on the story teller.

I don't see why the East Timor story serves as a reminder, except that it's
another example of an atrocity in war.

No war is nicer than any other and you can find many, many examples of
atrocities like this throughout history across the world.

------
partycoder
There are many views on the bombing. The difference is that Americans do not
hide it. It's controversial, but people know about it.

Same with Germans. People know about how the Germans behaved in WW2, they're
not proud about it, it's learned in schools, and they do not hide it.

Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. Japanese schools present
a revisionist version of history in which all their horrible and brutal war
crimes never happened. The Japanese people promote a vision of Japan with a
tradition full of honor and virtue. Do they teach their kids that they dropped
a bomb carrying the bubonic plague? or the massacre of Nanking? the mass
beheadings of people? the sexual slavery? and many other horrible crimes, even
targeting kids... probably not. This is the difference.

~~~
nihonde
For the record, this doesn't reflect my personal experience in Japan in any
way whatsoever. People here are quite well aware of their history, but they
don't understand some people's focus on Japan's most recent expansion into
China and Korea any more than Americans would understand someone whose sole
concern is the eradication of native Americans. This kind of "they're not
sorry enough for me" discussion is fruitless, because no nation or ethnicity
has a moral high ground to stand on.

Edit: I want to add that in my personal experience, there is no place on Earth
that is more peaceful and _pacifistic_ than Japan in 2016. Don't pay attention
to the government, which simply tows the line for America...I'm talking about
the people in the cities and villages. Meanwhile, to my point above, America
does nothing but wage wars since WW2. Make of that what you will.

~~~
avallet
I've been living in Japan for a couple years, and this reflects my experience
too with regards to most people I've met. However, it's not just the
government, but also a powerful and ageing elite which shares these views.
Admittedly not people you'll meet everyday, yet they wield obvious political
influence.

Anecdotally, I hadn't met any such people until yesterday, where I had to
attend a rotary international conference for a scholarship I receive from
them. The audience was composed of around 700 people, most of them CEOs of
local corporations, politicians or otherwise wealthy and connected people. The
average age must have been somewhere in the late fifties/early sixties. The
invited speaker was Masahiko Fujiwara [1], a mathematician turned essayist,
who probably should have stuck to number theory. It was basically an hour and
a half of chauvinist propaganda, hailing the past greatness of Japan, the
superiority of the Japanese people, and mocking (I quote and translate)
"Americans, Europeans and white people" at every turn with racial stereotypes.
And the entire audience was laughing and clapping their hands! It's scary to
think that these people might well be a representative sample of the ruling
Japanese elite.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiko_Fujiwara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiko_Fujiwara)

~~~
nihonde
Scary indeed. Those were the same people who dragged Japan into imperialism. I
guess waters in Japan run deep, and there have those small-minded people in
the ruling class that you find everywhere else, too.

I certainly don't see the current government of Japan reflecting the
sentiments of normal people in any way whatsoever, but I think a lot of
working class people feel like the government exists in a compromised world
where influences of powerful nations like America and Russia use Japan as a
proxy. Japan is not a passive player in that game, but the game itself doesn't
seem to interest the average person. The people I know are just working hard
to make ends meet and do a good job, raise a good family, etc.——normal human
stuff.

I'm not so naive to think that Japanese people aren't capable of being racist
assholes, but I would say the prevailing sentiment here is more humility than
arrogance or conniving. I'm a white American who married into a Japanese
family with a (very) distinguished naval history. My ancestry here is
definitely elite, but the money and power are a shadow of what they once
were——and that's probably a good thing. There's no room for hubris when you're
on the ropes. Everyone just has their focus at the human scale.

------
sandworm101
WWII is falling out of living memory very quickly. It should be of no surprise
that it is becoming every more glorified. Europe is shifting dangerously to
the right. The US is about to elect a hawk (both of them are hawks). An Asian
nation (this time China) is talking expansion, in influence if not in literal
territory. The western world is split on the issue of migrants fleeing local
conflicts. And everyone talks of tightening boards. All the ducks are lining
up nicely for the day we forget the lesson.

There is only so much room in Canada.

~~~
homero
Africa is back as a colony of China this time

------
canjobear
It took me about an hour to read this whole thing. If you are like me and find
the Hiroshima event fascinating, I highly recommend doing this. The piece
follows several people who ended up in a park together the night after the
bomb, and hauntingly captures the mood of that night and the horrifying
physical details of what people went through. I definitely think I'll remember
some images from this article for a while.

~~~
gunnihinn
The article was long ago published as a stand-alone book. I bought and read
the book before I ever knew it came from the New Yorker. It's one of the most
haunting things I've read, and I guard that book jealously, which is a long-
winded way of recommending you find the book and keep it around.

------
Trombone12
The following summary by Alex Wellerstein represents his understanding of the
consensus view. Notably the idea that the bombings where carefully motivated
by some sort of ethical calculus is not something that historians now believe.
From [http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to-
us...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to-use-the-bomb-
a-consensus-view/)

* It’s not really clear that Truman ever made much of a “decision,” or regarded the bomb/invasion issue as being mutually exclusive. Truman didn’t know if the bomb would end the war; he hoped, but he didn’t know, couldn’t know. The US was still planning to invade in November 1945. They were planning to drop as many atomic bombs as necessary. There is no contemporary evidence that suggests Truman was ever told that the causalities would be X if the bomb was dropped, and Y if it was not. There is no evidence that, prior to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that Truman was particularly concerned with Japanese causalities, radiation effects, or whether the bombs were ethical or not. The entire framing of the issue is ahistorical, after-the-fact, here. It was war; Truman had atomic bombs; it was taken for granted, at that point, that they were going to be used.

* Defeat is not surrender. Japan was certainly defeated by August 1945, in the sense that there was no way for them to win; the US knew that. But they hadn’t surrendered, and the peace balloons they had put out would have assumed not that the Emperor would have stayed on as some sort of benign constitutional monarch (much less a symbolic monarch), but would still be the god-head of the entire Japanese country, and still preserve the overall Japanese state. This was unacceptable to the US, and arguably not for bad reasons. Japanese sources show that the Japanese military was willing to bleed out the country to exact this sort of concession from the US.

* American sources show that the primary reason for using the bomb was to aid in the war against Japan. However, the fact that such weapons would be important in the postwar period, in particular vis-à-vis the USSR, was not lost on American policymakers. It is fair to say that there were multiple motivations for dropping the bomb, and specifically that it looks like there was a primary motivation (end the war) and many other “derivative” benefits that came from that (postwar power).

* Japanese sources, especially those unearthed and written about by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, make it clear that prior to the use of the atomic bombs, the Japanese cabinet was still planning on fighting a long battle against invasion, that they were hoping to exact the aforementioned concessions from the United States, and that they were aware (and did not care) that such an approach would cost the lives of huge numbers of Japanese civilians. It is also clear that the two atomic bombs did shock them immensely, and did help break the stalemate in the cabinet — but that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria also shocked them immensely, perhaps equally, maybe even more (if you have a choice between being occupied by Truman or occupied by Stalin, the decision is an easy one). But there is no easy way to disentangle the effects of the bombs or the Soviet invasion, in this sense — they were both immensely influential on the final decision. That being said, using the bomb as an “excuse” (as opposed to “we are afraid of Russians”) did play well with the Japanese public and made surrender appear to be a sensible, viable option in a culture where surrender was seen as a complete loss of honour.

~~~
reso
This is an excellent post that anyone thinking about Hiroshima should read.

This post by the same author also makes a convincing argument that the
beginning of the firebombing campaign against Japan with the bombing of Tokyo
(in which more people died than at Hiroshima) was the unnoticed ethical
turning point.

[http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/08/06/hiroshima-
at-67-th...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/08/06/hiroshima-at-67-the-
line-we-crossed/)

------
ksou32
It's very easy to judge past America 60 years from the moment.

Say you're about to be shipped out to run up a hill and killed by Japanese
machine guns.

Wouldn't you prefer Truman use a super weapon to end the war ?

~~~
hasenj
I think would much rather my leaders just sign some sort of an armistice
agreement rather than annihilate "enemy" civilians.

I mean there are ways to end a war without total destruction.

And the logic of killing civilians to save soldiers is just .. no comment.

~~~
hugh4
>I think would much rather my leaders just sign some sort of an armistice
agreement rather than annihilate "enemy" civilians.

Great idea! Now, how do we persuade the other side to sign that agreement?

~~~
bluejekyll
You're making the assumption that you -need- the other side to sign an
agreement. Japan was completely contained by the US at this point in the war.

This was a decision to hasten the end of the war, but did we ever actually
leave? We still have bases in Japan. This was about hastening an end with a
guarantee that the US would have full control of Japan.

Please don't misunderstand me though, Japan needed to be defeated thoroughly,
it had acted and performed gross injustices against many people in the world.
But these bombs were not necessary.

~~~
lujim
So maybe just a tug o' war or a water balloon fight to decide the winner of
the Pacific War?

We could have used those 1 million Purple Hearts we produced for the invasion
of Japan for anyone who stubbed a toe during all the festivities.

~~~
bluejekyll
Read Howard Zinn's, 'A People's History of the United States', then get back
to me.

~~~
lujim
I will check out a summary and if it looks good I will give it a read. My
googling makes it look a bit revisionist but I will check it out. Since we are
starting a book club try 'With the Old Breed' by Eugene Sledge and/or
'Flyboys' by James Bradley to see the hell on earth the Japanese military had
exported all over the Pacific. I was actually somewhat mentally exhausted by
the end of 'With the Old Breed' and was glad when it was over. The book
described something horrifying and grueling with no end in sight so I can't
imagine how it would feel to actually have lived it.

~~~
bluejekyll
James Clavell's fictional account based on his experiences in a Japanese
prison camp is wonderful read too, 'King Rat'.

I talked with my grandfather often about his service as a submariner in the
pacific, brutal, but oddly he never hated the Japanese. He saved that for the
French.

------
rootbear
I read the book version of this essay shortly before visiting Japan. It is
strange to stand next to the one preserved ruined building at ground zero and
think that there was once an atomic fire storm in that spot.

------
eceppda
The US started targeting defenseless civilians in Japan via fire bombing, and
the majority of the Japan's cities had already been destroyed by the time they
deployed the atomic bombs. The attacks on civilians in Japan were the first
examples of what is now standard procedure in the air force, now known as
"strategic bombing".

Mark Selden, a researcher at Cornell University, wrote an excellent article
detailing this: [http://apjjf.org/-Mark-
Selden/2414/article.html](http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html)

He points out how the attacks on civilians in Dresden, for example, were met
with shock by Europeans at the time. But the Americans never reacted as
strongly to the same bombings in Japan.

Several cities of civilians were destroyed in the Korean War. In Vietnam city
bombins and chemical weapons were deployed against civilians. Carpet bombing
was the term for targeting civilians in Iraq I. Etc etc etc. It's all
basically the same.

~~~
afterburner
This ignores the changes since Iraq War I though. Carpet bombing is no longer
standard procedure, because more accurate bombing became a lot cheaper.

~~~
kbart
" _Carpet bombing is no longer standard procedure "_

Really?

0\.
[http://cursor.org/stories/casualty_count.htm](http://cursor.org/stories/casualty_count.htm)
1\.
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.ter...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism6)
2\. [https://warisboring.com/b-52s-in-massive-mid-east-carpet-
bom...](https://warisboring.com/b-52s-in-massive-mid-east-carpet-bombing-
exercise-cf9aaa5e06ab#.q1khlkbnx)

etc.

------
studentrob
Cool. I hope Americans remember this as we consider electing someone who
thinks nuclear war is a bargaining tool.

"If they do, they do" is not something a President should be saying about
other nations engaging in nuclear war. Go mess up someone else's planet,
Trump.

------
palerdot
The more searing question for me is the argument that the shock created by the
atomic bombings has successfully prevented a WW 111. I cannot come to terms
with this argument though I slightly tend to agree with it. On the other hand,
the bombings were done just to force a japanese surrender, not with a
foresighted view of stopping all the horrible future wars in this planet.
Also, I'm not sure whether vietnam, gulf wars will be considered under the
"world war" category as a lot of them happened after the japanese bombings.

Now, I just resign myself that for whatever reason it happened, and let us
learn whatever we could from it.

------
KamiCrit
Wow that was a great read. Really shocking about what to took to survive
Hiroshima. The bomb, fires, flooding, radiation sickness.

------
oska
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan… Stalin Did [1]

[1] [http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-
japa...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-
did/)

------
microcolonel
I read through this, revisited some of the images of the aftermath.

I don't think I'll be able to eat meat today, my stomach is turning and I feel
like I could vomit.

It is so painful figuring that this is one of the "better" possible outcomes
of the war.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's one of the usual outcomes of war in general. Humans have been maiming,
burning, torturing, cutting, asphyxiating, and otherwise abusing other humans
for all of recorded history.

The only difference is that nuclear weapons are industrialised death machines
- much more _efficient_ than the usual manual methods.

------
unknown2374
And the states continue to get away with things like this to this day.

~~~
Zikes
I don't recall the US nuking anybody recently. Did I miss something?

------
tiredwired
It's ok, everything worked out in the end. US & Japan turned the whole
relationship thing around.

~~~
nihonde
Well, that is actually a good point. As President Obama said in anticipation
of his historic visit to Hiroshima this year (paraphrasing): the relationship
of Japan and the United States should serve as an example of how we can build
a lasting peace from bitter enmity.

It's also worth noting that President Obama and the G7 will be meeting on Ise
Shima, near Japan's most sacred Shinto site, Ise Jingu. It's significant
because the most important shrines of Ise Jingu are rebuilt on the site every
twenty years. I've visited Ise Jingu a few times, and the incredible
craftsmanship of the buildings is jaw-dropping. Every piece of ancient Hinoki
cedar used in the buildings is chiseled and sanded to perfection. They've been
re-building the shrines every 20 years for almost a thousand years. Among
other things, it's a metaphor for this whole conversation about forging a new
tradition.

------
mevile
> In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been
> burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts
> in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion, hill by hill,
> life for life; the soldiers were coming out of the hole, where they should
> have been safe, and blood was running from their heads, chests, and backs.
> They were silent and dazed.

However I may feel about the bomb having been used, I don't doubt it saved
more lives than it took. As for all the civilians and children and other non-
combatants, I doubt the tragedy would have been less without the bomb. It's
hard for me to reconcile how such an obvious force of destruction could be
more desirable than an invasion, and that's probably because it's very hard
for me to understand the destruction an invasion creates. An invasion's impact
isn't as easy to put into neat pictures and anecdotes as a singular experience
that a bomb explosion creates.

There's some question if the ramp up of the Soviets on their eastern border
had more to do with Japan's surrender than the atomic bombs we dropped. I'm
not sure there's a clear answer there.

~~~
ck2
By this logic, the US should just nuke any area causing problems for it.

Iraq invades Kuwait? Nuke it.

North Korea developing weapons of mass destruction? Nuke it.

Why mess around with invasions.

Note the scientists who developed the bomb begged the US government to first
drop one off the coast of Japan to demonstrate to them what they were facing.

Instead we killed tens of thousands of civilians on purpose, not once, but
went back a second time. The lucky ones were vaporized instantly. The unlucky
ones died over weeks in horrible pain from radiation and mass organ failure.

~~~
golergka
> By this logic, the US should just nuke any area causing problems for it.

I don't think you actually understand said logic. US was in war with Japan for
a long time, and was steadily winning; however, against self-interest of their
country, Japanese command would not surrender. Continuing assault, US
inflicted enormous civilian losses on Japan. The firebombing of Tokyo alone
was at least as deadly as Hiroshima atomic bomb. And yet, Japan command did
not want to surrender. Only atomic bomb finally succeed in ending the war.

It didn't happen because of some abstract "score"; it happened because of
sheer moral shock of how one bomb was able to destroy an entire city. If US
had decided to just bomb Hiroshima with conventional methods, inflicting
exactly the same amount of death and destruction, it most likely wouldn't have
ended the war.

Iraq, North Korea and other situations you can link with "this logic" are
_not_ similar to this.

------
Aelinsaar
It must have been a surreal experience, to walk through the burning remains of
your world, without an explanation as to "How".

~~~
slimsag
Even with an explanation to "How", "Why" is the more common question when
faced with intentional and extreme tragedy against yourself and loved ones.

~~~
niels_olson
Having gone through Katrina and been deployed for Fukushima, I assure you,
there is plenty of time for the survivors to contemplate _all_ the questions.
That is arguably part of the tragedy of survivorship: facing down _all_ the
questions, and knowing with cruel certainty there will be time to face them.

~~~
canjobear
I also went through Katrina and the thing in this piece that reminded me the
most of that experience was how people quickly became numb to the horror of
their situation and dealt with things practically, one thing after the other.
Or alternately became totally nonfunctional.

~~~
niels_olson
Agreed. Coming from the military though, it was actually somewhat reassuring.
It was like going back to my old job: crisis becomes the daily grind.

------
dmfdmf
I have no problem with America bombing Japan with nuclear weapons. They (and
Germany) deserved what they got, they started a world war and we finished it.
All this American angst and apologia is coming from the anti-American
intellectuals in the US. They have been spreading their propaganda unopposed
for decades. The US is NOT GUILTY and owes no apologies whatsoever, Obama's
pathetic mea culpa trip to Japan notwithstanding. For all you rationalists who
like thought experiments (pretentiously called gedanken experiments by the
same intellectuals); imagine what the world would be like if Germany and the
Japanese had won WWII.

~~~
krapp
You're accusing others of propaganda while trotting out the old right-wing
hobbyhorses of "anti-American intellectualism" and Obama apologizing for
American foreign policy.

Your claim that he's making a "pathetic mea culpa trip to Japan," despite the
White House having stated clearly that he doesn't intend to apologize for the
bombings when the visits Hiroshoma, is itself propaganda.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, Germany and Japan were both incapable of
winning anything when the bombs were dropped (Germany had surrendered, and
Japan was wrecked,) so the outcome where they won WWII if the atomic bombs
_hadn 't_ been dropped simply couldn't exist.

~~~
dmfdmf
Do you mean the same anti-intellectual "right-wing" who thinks the USA should
be a faith-based, Christian nation? You have me confused with somebody else
and need to consider the fact that both the left and right are wrong.

~~~
krapp
I do consider them both wrong, but it's nevertheless the case that the
bogeymen of "anti-American intellectuals" and Obama's international
"apologies" have been props of the right for years. If you don't share their
views, maybe don't repeat their arguments or prop up their strawmen.

~~~
dmfdmf
So if the Right says the sun rises in the East should I repudiate that because
they say it too? The American intellectuals hate America and blame America
regardless of the context. That is a fact and if you are honest you can
discover that fact for your self.

At least we can agree to agree, the Left and Right are a false alternative
offered to the American people.

~~~
krapp
I tend to disagree with people who insist on political absolutes. Only a Sith
deals in absolutes.

~~~
dmfdmf
> Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Isn't this an absolute? So you tend to disagree with yourself or do you make
exceptions for self-contradiction?

~~~
krapp
It was a joke, but to be honest, I always make exceptions for self-
contradiction and the possibility that I am unaware of my own ignorance. I
believe humans are by nature contradictory, we're wired for bias confirmation,
not truth. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

~~~
dmfdmf
"I was just joking" ...always the refrain of the scoundrel when called on
their BS, at least in my experience.

It is a strawman to imply that my position is that no one is allowed any
contradiction or errors whatsoever. The issue is not errors of knowledge or
mistakes but the failure to correct such errors when they are found. An honest
man works to correct his errors and contradictions, i.e. is consistent, while
the dishonest like to wallow in them or pretend they don't exist or
rationalize them by misquoting Emerson.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
Reliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance)

~~~
krapp
>It is a strawman to imply that my position is that no one is allowed any
contradiction or errors whatsoever.

It's also a strawman to imply that I ever implied that.

~~~
dmfdmf
LOL, "strawman". I don't think it means what you think it means.

Don't think we didn't noticed that you ignored the fact that you misquoted
Emerson.

