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AIBU?

To think Obama SHOULD apologise to the people of Japan?

188 replies

HappenstanceMarmite · 27/05/2016 13:53

For his country decimating Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Yes, he wasn't personally responsible. But I believe a heartfelt apology - and the taking of ownership for his country's atrocity - would mean a lot to the victims' families ...and all of Japan actually.

OP posts:
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cupidsgame · 27/05/2016 18:20

I am so pleased he isn't going to.

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Bolograph · 27/05/2016 18:25

Ive been to the Hiroshima atomic bomb museum and do not deny the suffering of ordinary the Japanese following the event however no where in the museum does it tell you what Japan had done during the war to cause the Allies to take the action they did.

When did you go? I've been several times, and there was a marked changed between early noughties and late noughties, co-inciding with the court case in Japan which finally acknowledged the large number of Korean slave labourers who had been affected, and then denied help by the Japanese government after the war. That flushed out a lot of the "poor innocent Japan, quietly going about its legitimate business of a near genocidal conflict prosecuted with great cruelty aiming at regional domination peaceably sewing kimonos and worshipping our ancestors, until the nasty Americans for no apparent reason spent a lot of money on building a cruel weapon which they used to finish a war which wasn't really happening anyway and even if it had been happening was a local war for local people, of no concern to outsiders" and more recently there has been talk of Nanking and Pearl Harbour, although not the Burma Railroad.

It's morally difficult. Germany had been, in some sense, a democracy up until 1933 and even though Hitler didn't broadcast the precise details of the Shoah, a lot of people knew and were perfectly happy to go along with it, and in many cases partake with enthusiasm. Letters from the camps written by guards, or from the Eizsatzgruppen on the Eastern front, were not censored, and it defies belief that people did not know. The films of allegedly unknowing German civilians being paraded through camps up the road from where they lived, affecting to be shocked by what had been happening are multi-dimensional bullshit: the myth of the "good German" who knew nothing suited everyone's purposes to construct, because even if those civilians didn't know the full horror and extent, they knew damned well that bad stuff was happening, but German post-1945 would have been ungovernable had that been pursued. Knowledge of the crimes was deemed not to be a crime, and probably in a nasty pragmatic way that was the right decision.

But in the case of Japan it had never been anything remotely approximating a democracy, and the vast majority of the population had no reason or way to know about the atrocities, which in any event were happening thousands of miles away. You can make an argument for the innocence of the adult population of Hiroshima which is much harder to make for the adult population of Hamburg; they genuinely didn't know what was being done in their name, nor would they have been able to do anything about it had they known.

The moral calculus is therefore not about the innocence or otherwise of the victims. The Atomic Bombs killed, in round numbers, including later casualties, no more than a quarter of a million people. At least a hundred thousand people a month were dying of starvation, ill-health and the effects of conventional bombing raids in early 1945, and that was set to accelerate: The 1945 rice harvest had failed, Operation Starvation had sunk over a million tonnes of coastal shipping and closed almost all the harbours, and the next step would have been tactical bombing, from carriers and nearby Islands, in the manner of the 1944 transportation plan in Europe, to sever all the railway and road bridges. In Japanese occupied territories the position was worse, and similar numbers were dying. Some estimates have the potential number of deaths from starvation in mainland Japan as high as seven million by the end of 1946, and it's likely that Operation Olympic couldn't have been launched until then.

So you get to choose, with your time machine. Say, a quarter of a million dead in August 1945, or twenty or more times that toll over the ensuing twelve months. Which is morally preferable?

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Sanibel09 · 27/05/2016 18:45

Hell NO
My grandfather was one of the many who were tortured and executed by those feckers. The bombs should have been dropped earlier

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vinoandbrie · 27/05/2016 18:51

YABU. He definitely should not apologise, what a peculiar thing to suggest. Have you no grasp of the realities of the situation?

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Alisvolatpropiis · 27/05/2016 19:09

I rather think Japan should be doing some apologising, not America.

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VulcanWoman · 27/05/2016 19:37

Hell NO
My grandfather was one of the many who were tortured and executed by those feckers. The bombs should have been dropped earlier


Can I ask, did you take the opportunity to go over to Japan on the program a poster mentioned earlier in the thread?

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phlebasconsidered · 27/05/2016 19:49

Leaving aside politics, I think we can all agree that there were very many families who grew up under the Japanese indoctrination of the time who had no choice but to comply and thus be blasted. Likewise, there were Germans who were brought up under Nazism who were indoctrinated from birth. They died. Similarly, Russians whose choice was fight or did, or your relatives are in Siberia.

An apology is NOT just to the governing body. Fuck then, they got us into this. It's maybe a great thing for ordinary people to hear.

My own grandad visited his Burmese prisoner camp. He made friends on both sides and he was never as naive as to think that either side then had a free choice.

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EveryoneElsie · 27/05/2016 19:53

It was ordinary Japanese men that tortured the victims of their medical experiments, raped on command, and ran the camps.
They may not have had a free choice on whether to obey orders or not, but they did not all act with humanity or compassion.

Has Japan asked Obama to apologise? Considering their own refusal it would be hypocritical if them if they did.

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Bolograph · 27/05/2016 19:57

The bombs should have been dropped earlier

There wasn't a droppable bomb earlier. There were two sorts of bomb: the inefficient but very simple Little Boy gun-assembly enriched uranium weapon (Hiroshima), and the far more complex Fat Man implosion-assembly plutonium weapon (Nagasaki). The Thin Man gun-assembly plutonium weapon wouldn't have worked, and was abandoned early on.

Uranium 235 is difficult to make in the relatively large quantities needed for a gun-assembly weapon, but the physics and mechanics of it are so simple they decided to drop it untested. It's just a long gun barrel with a lump of U235 at one end and a bullet of U235 at the other, and once you have the basic insights on the physics it's just a matter of getting enough U235 and an old anti-aircraft gun barrel.

Plutonium 239 is not easy to make either, but you don't need as much of it; however, the implosion assembly (a hollow sphere of fissile material that is collapsed into a dense mass by explosive lenses) is very difficult and therefore there was a need to test the weapon first first. A gun assembly plutonium weapon won't work, for reasons to do with impurities in the process for making Pu at scale. Implosion assembly used a large range of new technologies, all untried, hence the need to test it. That test took place in July 1945, the Trinity Test, and used almost all of the available Pu239.

Both weapons were used pretty much as soon as there was enough fissile material of the respective types available. The only way to do it earlier would have been to drop the Trinity device ("the gadget") untested but (a) it wasn't properly weaponised and (b) there was a great deal of uncertainty about its operation anyway. There wasn't enough U235 to build Little Boy until then, and they had to wait for the Trinity test to know that the Fat Man would work.

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VulcanWoman · 27/05/2016 19:58

Well said phlebasconsidered

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YokoWakarimasen · 27/05/2016 20:00

The Japanese have said that they neither want nor expect an apology. There is a lot of reluctance to admit to their own actions - comfort women and so on- in part due to shame and embarrassment.

I am revolted by the use of the term Japs on this thread on page one and only one person commenting on it. Racism is never acceptable. Nor are the Japanese people feckers.

What Obama might want to apologize for is the level of rape by U.S soldiers in Okinawa.

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MrHannahSnell · 27/05/2016 20:16

No way should he apologize. What for? Japan started the war with an unprovoked attack and behaved in the most inhuman manner imaginable.

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Radicalrooster · 27/05/2016 20:30

Glad to see a large number of historically literate posters who don't fall for this 'nuclear bomb ergo evil' bullshit.

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EatsShitAndLeaves · 27/05/2016 20:35

No.

Lots of reasons tbh.

Japan's inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour.

The kamikaze pilot initiative to demonstrate they would die rather than surrender - even if that meant sending their own teenagers into suicide plans.

Finally - there were 2 bombs remember. They could have surrendered after the first. Pretty much sums up the culture at the time - maybe the emperor ought apologise to their own people and the cost of not losing face.

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EatsShitAndLeaves · 27/05/2016 20:40

Should probably add as a disclaimer my DGF was in Burma.

Without the war ending when it did I wouldn't be here.

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Sanibel09 · 27/05/2016 21:03

Vulcan. I neither have the time nor the money or even the inclination to go there

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DawnMumsnet · 27/05/2016 21:14

Evening all,

We've had a number of reports about the use of the term 'Japs' on this thread. In case anyone's not aware, this is widely considered to be offensive, so we'd be grateful if people could refrain from using it.

Many thanks.

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Furiosa · 27/05/2016 21:19

MN HQ,

Is Russkies ok?

It's film tile!

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VulcanWoman · 27/05/2016 21:21

San sounds like the Japanese Government pay for the trip. Might help heal some of the wounds your family have been through. To see things from both sides can sometimes help us to have some understanding of why these things happen. What harm could it do to at least try.

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Sanibel09 · 27/05/2016 21:23

This reply has been deleted

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HolgerDanske · 27/05/2016 21:23

Yes, YABVU.

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YokoWakarimasen · 27/05/2016 21:32

Sanibel - It is racist. British people use the term Brits themselves, and it is used positively - in conjunction with awards and so on. The term against the Japanese is widely known to be racist and is used negatively. It is down to those within an ethnic group to decide if a term is offensive, not those outside it.

And calling people fuckers because you are ignorant of the connotations of language just shows yourself up, frankly.

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Theydontknowweknowtheyknow · 27/05/2016 21:41

OMFG that Nanking massacre reading was horrendous. What the fuck is wrong with men that do this?

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VulcanWoman · 27/05/2016 21:47

That's what War does to men on both sides. Inhumane acts.

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LikeDylanInTheMovies · 27/05/2016 21:49

Shush Sanibel the grown ups are talking.

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