Japan wants us to apologize for the bomb - they should at least acknowledge their atrocities

[old mark]

over the 15 years they were at war with their asian neighbors. They murdered many thousands of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos and western people and have never acknowledged any of it, nor appologized to anyone for it.
Links for examples:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Japanese-Atrocities-during-World-War-II-in-Philippines

http://everything2.com/title/Japanese+Atrocities+in+World+War+II

http://www.angelfire.com/nm/bcmfofnm/atrocities/atrocities02.html

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/alpha/speech/Harris.htm


Look for yourself. I expect at least some recognition on the part of the Japanese that the war did not happen just to them...they actively caused and persued it and their conduct of war was absolutely barberic and they taks zero responsibility for any of it.

Please read the articles-read some history before you judge.

mark

[VMI Dem]

1. We shouldn't apologize to them for shit.

Half a million Korean civilians were killed. Fuck 'em.

[Egalitariat]

2. What we did to Hiroshima pales in comparison to what they did to Detroit***

nm

[MadHound]

4. Oh good grief, Detroit did it to themselves

In fact Japan, and the rest of the world, would have probably overtaken and lapped the US earlier in manufacturing, except for the fact that the rest of the industrial world was blown to hell and gone after WWII and had to spend the next couple of decades rebuilding.

[Kalyke]

12. Oh, good grief, no they didn't.

To this day, Americans still believe American cars are inferior, when the truth is that they're better-made, less-expensive and easier to fix should they break down than anything rolling off a Japanese blueprint.

And out government has done precious little with our tariff laws to protect our products, thereby, protecting our union workers and the money made here staying here.

[MadHound]

19. The quality of American cars has risen in the past decade,

But the fact of the matter is that during the seventies, eighties and into the nineties, American auto quality was shit. Even the Big 3 have acknowledged this.

Hell, even during the fifties and sixties, Detroit cars were hugely inefficient and the Big 3 were extremely resistant to change. In fact the Big 3 absolutely crushed Tucker Motors in the early fifties, why, because he was offering a car with advanced safety features that they didn't want to pay additional money to add to their cars, things like safety belts. Instead of putting in these safety features, they thought that it was cheaper to crush this upstart instead, and thus thousands of lives were lost needlessly, for want of a safety belt. Hell, the swiveling headlight that is now being touted on high end US cars as the next big safety feature, Tucker had it going on his cars sixty years ago.

The fact is, the US auto sector was the only one truly standing after WWII, which gave them a huge leg up for decades. Rather than using this advantage to innovate and increase efficiency, they became complacent and slacked. Hell, we had a goddamn hybrid car developed by Chevy in the late sixties, and what did they do? Kill it!

No wonder that when the oil shocks hit in the seventies, we simply weren't able to keep up. Our entire auto industry was geared to large, inefficient power plants in large, heavy cars. And in their hubris and stupidity, the Big 3 resisted change until they nearly died (remember, this is the second time we bailed out Chrysler). The fact of the matter is that if Detroit hadn't become fat, lazy and stupid during the post war period, if they had continued to innovate rather than sit on their laurels, if they had invested in quality rather than slacking, Detroit would still be the car dealer to the world.

Yes, US autos have finally caught up with the rest of the world in terms of quality, innovation and reliability. It took them almost forty years, forty years they flushed down the toilet. Hopefully they've learned their lesson.

[CBGLuthier]

3. .... leaves the whole world blind..........

[oneshooter]

5. There were more killed by B-29 bomb raids than

Killed by both atomic bombs combined. Even after the second bomb the Japanese military tried a coup against the civilian government. They wanted to continue the war.

The Japanese atrocities included the "Rape of Nanking", Battan Death March, biological warfare tests on prisoners, and a general nasty attitude toward anything not Japanese.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

The use of the bombs also saved an estimated 1-1.5 million casualties from the invasion of the Japanese Homeland.

[Upton]

6. Japan should apologize for their whaling atrocities..

screw 'em..

[Dappleganger]

23. My thoughts exactly.

[Richardo]

7. God I'm tired of this apology bullshit - they're worse than meaningless.

(Setting aside the fact that IMO the US has nothing to apologize for in this case)

Humans have been horrible to other humans since we became human.

Apologies for atrocities have no meaning whatsoever. Apologies do not bring the dead back, nor do they compensate any victims. They do not punish the perpetrators, nor do they absolve the acts.

These public demands for 'apologies' for horrendous acts trivialize the suffering endured by the victims, as if saying 'I'm sorry' somehow makes it all better.

Atrocities are deliberate, pre-meditated, planned, sanctioned acts. They're beyond redemption, and beyond forgiveness.

Do I want to hear the Sudan apologize for Darfur? No, I want them to stop the genocide and I want the perpetrators jailed - or killed themselves.

Keep your fucking apology.

[pipi_k]

14. thumbs up for this one....

Apologies generally don't mean shit, especially if the one apologizing just goes right back out and does it again.

Like the spousal abuser..."OMG I'm so sorry...I didn't mean to hurt you and it'll never happen again!" yeah. right. :eyes:

It doesn't change the past, it doesn't compensate the victims.

The only thing that does work is changing one's behavior. But people would mostly rather just offer half-hearted apologies than do the hard work of REALLY making sure it never happens again.

Apologies without substance suck hyena ass.

[Bunny]

22. .

:applause:

[cherish44]

33. + a million

Apologies don't mean crap especially the kind that are given because they were "demanded".

[elehhhhna]

8. They were allowed to kept trillions in asian plundered treasure, which totally kickstarted

their post-war "economic miracle". This happened with our blessing, btw.

But somehow this thread feels a bit freepy in a self-serving, jingoistic way. Just sayin'.

Defending the use of the A-Bomb still ain't easy for me.

[exboyfil]

9. Agree completely

If Truman did not authorize the usage and we invaded and lost up to 500,000 men, Truman would have been impeached (maybe even lynched). My grandfather survived the war because those bombs were dropped. We have nothing to apologize for. They wanted total war and we gave it to them.

Our postwar treatment of Japan has been one of the most humane approaches in history. Our soldiers could have treated them like their soldiers treated the Phillipinos or the residents of Nanking. Not to mention the Bataan Death March or their unprovoked sneak attack to start our war with them.

Also they happened to ally themselves with the craziest mass murderer in history.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. There's no tit-for-tat with atrocities. And there's no apology that can bring...

justice to the victims. It's all grandstanding and political bullshit.

Acknowledge the past and do better in the future. It's all we can do.

[Richardo]

11. Well put, you TreasonousBastard

:D

Much more succinct than my post :patriot:

[miscsoc]

13. An apology would legitimise right wing Japanese nationalism

Personally, I'm not sure about the morality of the bombs in Japan but the legitimation of German commemoration of the bombing of Dresden (which I can't defend, and is probably a lot harder to defend morally than the atomic bombing of Japan) has given German neo-nazis a victim narrative around which they can rally and build far right support

The use of nuclear weapons may well have been wrong - I don't know enough to be able to make an informed judgement - but even if it was, an official apology would help nobody and could concievably do a lot of harm.

And Japan has never gone through a process of self-criticism and renunciation of the past on the scale that Germany did.

[malaise]

15. I don't know if you noticed but for the first time ever

the American Ambassador showed up at the memorial ceremony in Hiroshima today.
Sorry - that was a crime against humanity in much the same way that the Japanese committed crimes against humanity. No people on earth should be proud of bombing innocent people.

[Puregonzo1188]

37. Thank you! I'm really dismayed and disgusted by this either or attitude I've seen

on DU today. Either the Japanese committed horrendous atrocities or the dropping of the atomic bomb was a wrong. As if it has to be one or the other. Imperial Japan was horrible, and the Rape of Nanking was only one of many atrocities, but that doesn't make the atom bomb right. In the same 9/11 was a terrible crime, but it doesn't justify torture. Or the way US foreign policy in the Middle East doesn't justify 9/11. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[retread]

16. Funny that people who normally question propaganda their government spews will

quote verbatim the 'official" justification for the mass extermination of civilians.


"The principal justification for obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that it "saved lives" because otherwise a planned US invasion of Japan would have been necessary, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Truman at one point used the figure "a half million lives," and Churchill "a million lives," but these were figures pulled out of the air to calm troubled consciences; even official projections for the number of casualties in an invasion did not go beyond 46,000.

In fact, the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not forestall an invasion of Japan because no invasion was necessary. The Japanese were on the verge of surrender, and American military leaders knew that. General Eisenhower, briefed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the imminent use of the bomb, told him that "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."

After the bombing, Admiral William D. Leary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the atomic bomb "a barbarous weapon," also noting that: "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."

The Japanese had begun to move to end the war after the US victory on Okinawa, in May of 1945, in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. After the middle of June, six members of the Japanese Supreme War Council authorized Foreign Minister Togo to approach the Soviet Union, which was not at war with Japan, to mediate an end to the war "if possible by September."

Togo sent Ambassador Sato to Moscow to feel out the possibility of a negotiated surrender. On July 13, four days before Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met in Potsdam to prepare for the end of the war (Germany had surrendered two months earlier), Togo sent a telegram to Sato: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. It is his Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war."

The United States knew about that telegram because it had broken the Japanese code early in the war. American officials knew also that the Japanese resistance to unconditional surrender was because they had one condition enormously important to them: the retention of the Emperor as symbolic leader. Former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew and others who knew something about Japanese society had suggested that allowing Japan to keep its Emperor would save countless lives by bringing an early end to the war." -- Howard Zinn

[-..__...]

17. OK... we're sorry...

Now go home and get your fuckin' shinebox...

[Richardo]

21. !!!

Precisely. :rofl:

[VioletLake]

18. Unit 731

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

[godai]

20. Link? Japan wants an apology??

You apparently feel a need to bring up this topic on August 6, starting with the false premise that Japan wants an apology. I'm aware of what's going on in Japan and they want an end to nuclear weapons but there's no great demand for an apology for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As pointed out by others, US firebombing of Tokyo and other major Japanese cities killed many more CIVILIANS than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The Japanese are well aware of all this and they justifiably resent the lawlessness of it all. They basically detest their military for the horrors caused during WWII. You won't see the national anthem being played before sporting events in Japan.

Still some feel the need to try to justify this by comparison to the atrocities of the Japanese military. Both were wrong but the US remains alone as actually using atomic weapons.

[Bonobo]

24. +1. And the lack of class in bringing it up today is very telling.

The OP should be ashamed to have done such a cowardly and disgusting thing.

[Bonobo]

25. This classy OP is now on DU's "Greatest Page"

Congratulations for representing DU all of you who recced this.

A post, on the anniversary, of the dropping of The Bomb,

A post creating a strawman and then beating it up.

A post defending dropping 2 nukes on a country on the very day that it is being remembered, in peace and solemnity.

This makes me very sad and angry.

[godai]

27. Happens every year...some of the comparisons are laughable.

Comparing the use of atomic bombs on civilians to whaling, the decline of cars made in Detroit and trillions in plunder (more likely that was the Nazis, which doesn't seem to bother these people nearly as much) just shows the lengths that some will go to, to try to rationalize the mass killing of civilians using atomic bombs.

Let's see...we rounded up Japanese US citizens and put them in camps, but did not do this for German US citizens. I wonder why...

[AsahinaKimi]

28. I am very sad

かなしい:cry:

*Edited for correction. gomen ne.

[Bonobo]

29. Can I correct you?

悲しい　＝　かなしい

「い」が抜かれていた。

[ZombieHorde]

31. Some people hate Japanese people because their TV tells them to hate Japanese people. nt

[Froward69]

26. Rape of Nanking

Whaling, Korean slavery, Battan death march... (just off the top of my head.) for these the Bomb was justifiable. (including saving 1,000,000+ had we had to invade Japan.)

[ZombieHorde]

30. Do you and your loved ones deserve death for the actions of the US?

How many innocent Americans should die for American whaling? How many innocent Americans should die for American slavery? American genocide?

Perhaps we should cheer when American children are murdered. Perhaps their deaths are justifiable when the actions of others are taken into consideration. Thank God for 911?

[uppityperson]

32. Unrec because I have seen/heard nothing of Japan wanting an apology.

Unrec also because atrocity does not excuse atrocity.

[ZombieHorde]

34. Firstly, Japan DID apologise for the atrocieties, secondly, Japan has not asked for an apology

from the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan

I am really disappointed in you old mark, spreading racist lies is not good. I think you should apologize for your deceit.

[John Agar]

35. Both sides committed atrocities.

Man's inhumanity for man is not unique to any "side" or culture.

[tabasco]

36. They weren't ready to surrender when we dropped the bomb, either.

The fanatics had taken control and were ready to fight to the last man.

Good post. Sorry to see so many idiots unrec it.