To think Obama SHOULD apologise to the people of Japan?

[HappenstanceMarmite]

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.

[Bolograph]

I think it is disingenuous to suggest that Goldhagen was in any way seeing distinctions between Germans and Jews in the same way that the Third Reich did. You cannot discuss the Holocaust without reference to Jews as a separate class of people under the Nazi regime.

I think that if I wrote an article about issues in multiethnic Britain and referred to "Muslims" and "the British" you'd assume I was a racist, and at best my language would be seen as extraordinarily careless. Referring to "Germans" and "Jews" makes concrete the idea that Jews had less right to be in Germany than "Germans". Clive James writes about this more elegantly than I can:

And it makes no sense whatsoever to call the perpetrators of the Holocaust ‘the Germans’ if by that is meant that the German victims of Nazism – including many Jews who went on regarding themselves as Germans to the end of the line – somehow weren’t Germans at all. That’s what the Nazis thought, and to echo their hare-brained typology is to concede them their victory. Nothing, of course, could be further from Goldhagen’s intention, but his loose language has led him into it.

[BuonoEstente]

That wiki on Nanking has made me feel physically ill.

[KatieKaboom]

Horrifying, isn't it. But just one of many atrocities committed by the Japanese.

[Toomanymarsbars]

My mil is Japanese. She had no idea of the atrocities Japanese soldiers committed on the orders of their superiors until she came to the UK decades ago, as all text books in Japanese schools etc were and are to a degree still censored. It was only until she saw the actual news reels that she believed it. The point is, the brainwashing of the Japanese government of its own citizens has been prolific, to the point they (Japanese government officials) honestly believe nothing happened re the comfort women, despite its own soldiers coming forth and trying to tell the truth to the media. The a-bomb museum in Hiroshima was amazing - it fairly told the account of the war from BOTH sides, why the allied nations felt the need to drop the bomb, and why from here on out peace should be the main issue not dwelling on the why's and demands for apologies. Yes it was horrific what happened. War is horrific. Every country has committed atrocities at some point in the past of all history. They know, wrongly or not, they can't keep apologising forever, they can only come as close as possible to it. Obamas words have gone down well in Japan because he acknowledged the suffering of the citizens in Japan at the hands of the bomb.

[Toomanymarsbars]

Soldiers in Okinawa ordered their own citizens to suffocate their infants when hiding in the caves and holes on the island, they used mothers and children as human shields because they knew allied soldiers wouldn't attack civilians directly like that. They slit the throats of Japanese babies who kept crying. They ate human meat, they beat their own soldiers who wouldn't comply, and those Japanese soldiers who tried to run away or refused to carry out the hideous orders of their superiors were executed and their family name shamed . It's only recently that those elderly soldiers have been trying to have their voices heard about what the government was ordering them to do. They have said the,selves, the bomb was what put an end to all that. Make of that what you will.

[Bolograph]

Suppose, for the sake of argument, the war had ended in a slightly different way. Change a few things, roll it forward.

Let's suppose that centimetric radar didn't arrive when it did and the four-rotor Enigma had been competently deployed, making ULTRA ineffective from 1943 onwards. The U Boat campaign is thus slightly more effective (although still ultimately unsuccessful, because of VLR Liberators, "Jeep" escort carriers and so on, which require much bigger changes to history to stop).

That delays D Day or makes it less effective, so that come Christmas 1944 the Ardennes offensive and Operation BoedenPlatte (or whatever the name is of the 1st Jan 1945 raid on Dutch airfields was) were more effective.

The Russians are also weakened (higher Allied shipping losses means less resources for the Russian convoys) so their advance is slowed too, into the winter of 1945.

The Russians start liberating the Polish extermination camps in 1946, with of course many millions more killed. But the German Army still looks pretty invincible on the Rhine and able to hold its own to the east.

The war then ends with nuclear strikes on Berlin (15kT over the Brandenburg Gate) and a couple of other sizeable German cities, say Munich and Hamburg, plus tactical strikes in order to support crossings of the Rhine and somewhere to the east. What would we now think?

[Bolograph]

How the hell do you create people who are willing to do that? It sounds like an extreme cult.

How do you find people to staff Sobidor?

[PinkBallerina]

My grandfathers cousin was tortured to death by the Japanese for being too tall and too good looking for their liking. No apology should be made IMHO

[enterYourPassword]

ego

How the hell do you create people who are willing to do that? It sounds like an extreme cult.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

That could have been said by many, many modern politicians from Blair and Bush, Putin, any number of powerful EU bureaucrats...

It was said by Goring though. A despicable man of course, but one who understood how to control the population of a country.

[VulcanWoman]

Obamas words have gone down well in Japan because he acknowledged the suffering of the citizens in Japan at the hands of the bomb.

That has to be a good thing then.

[CaveMum]

Just as further evidence have a read of this Daily Mail article that tells the story of one POW. I can't comprehend the things he went through

[DN4GeekinDerby]

The recent declassification shines more light on this. MAGIC and ULTRA documents like this one from
this one from 13th of July 1945 and this one from 2nd of August 1945,in which it specifically says Japan wants to work with Russia for peace. It's weird reading the second one and knowing four days later was the Hiroshima bombing - it reads struggling but hopeful to me.

Many military leaders of the time saw no military justification for the bombing. Admiral William Leahy and Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy among others were against - all saying Japan was already defeated, General Douglas MacArthur later stated he was not consulted but he thought there was no military justification for it. In writings released later, like the declassified documents linked, from President Truman and General-later-President Eisenhower show that both knew that Japan was on the edge of defeat and looking for peace. Many then and now view that the bombings were more about scaring the Soviets [there are quotes from Truman that he was worried that damage from previous bombings would mean the atomic one wouldn't show its power as much], gaining control of the area before the Soviets could, and/or just wanting to use the bombs and very little to with saving lives of anyone.

I went to several US schools and in all of them Okinawa came up - except we were told that was all of Japan, all Japanese. At 10-11, after being told that, we had to debate as a class if the bombings were justified with only that information. Afterwards, the teacher proudly said she's never had a single class say they were unjustified in her decades of teaching. Funnily enough, none of them ever mentioned or had us debate the US Japanese interment camps... It's a mess and the US really has to stop holding itself up and justifying everything if it ever going to heal and move out of the hate filled national culture that is causing the growing storm there now. Obama's words are a good start.

[Bolograph]

in which it specifically says Japan wants to work with Russia for peace.

Which was entirely futile, for three reasons.

Firstly, Japan was not at war with Russia, so could not surrender to it. Russia was at the time planning to invade Japan anyway, as it wanted the mainland territories.

Secondly, Togo didn't command a majority of the war cabinet, and never did until the emperor intervened after Nagasaki, so even had the Russians somehow agreed to something, the Army and Navy would have refused to surrender.

And thirdly, what Japan was trying to negotiate was expressly against the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded unconditional surrender (everyone had seen what conditional surrenders looked like post-1919) and certainly wasn't going to accept Japan retaining its occupied territories.

So the peace faction in the war cabinet was trying to negotiate an armistice which two of the parties would not have accepted, which the third couldn't have accepted as it wasn't at war, and which the Army and Navy wouldn't have agreed to anyway even on the terms offered.

Other than that, it's convincing.

[Gremlinsateit]

Interesting thread. Just one tiny side point - "Paki" is certainly considered offensive in Australia (I'm uncomfortable typing it) and is only used by racists, casual or otherwise. It was widely used in the 70s (re cricket) but not any more.

[mathanxiety]

I agree with you about the hate filled national culture in the US, and also the culture of fear. Fear of an outside enemy has been a constant since WWI and perhaps earlier (the Know Nothings).

From the Japanese pov, the first bomb was just another in a series of destructive firestorms that had up to then levelled over 60 Japanese cities. From the US pov that first bomb had two objectives - to possibly scare the Japanese into submission and to scare the USSR.

At the time the first bomb was dropped, Japan's objective was to end up with a deal from the Allies that would fall short of unconditional surrender - allow the Emperor and the political system built around him to remain, and permit the holding of many territories captured by Japan. To achieve this, two approaches were available. One was to hold over a million troops ready for intense resistance on the home islands. The other was to try to get the (neutral) USSR to broker a deal with the Allies. Japan suspected the toll would be too high for the US to continue to fight through to the bitter end, which would be necessary in order to gain an unconditional surrender by military means. The USSR was officially neutral towards Japan though allied to the US and Britain for purposes of war in the European theatre.

Japan's decision to capitulate came after the first bomb but before the second one, and the reason was what happened in between, i.e. the declaration of war by the USSR. The option to get the USSR to broker a deal was eliminated by the Soviet declaration of war and its invasion of Manchuria the day after. The prospect of immediate invasion by the USSR spurred Japan to think more favourably of capitulation to the US since Soviet forces, which had mowed down Japanese resistance in Manchuria and were poised to invade Hokkaido, were right on the doorstep and moving fast. Loss of Manchuria meant Japan lost industrial capability that was necessary in order to defend the home islands.

The second bomb was a message to Stalin not to try to invade any more of Japanese territory than it had already taken (= Sakhalin - though the USSR later in the year took the disputed Kurils). It was also a message to Japan that complete physical annihilation was a possibility, and that unconditional surrender was all the Allies would accept. Japan chose what was seen by the Supreme Council as the lesser of two evils in surrendering to the Allies. They surrendered before they were annihilated by the Soviets and the west combined. Or just the USSR. (This is the argument of historian Richard Frank, basically).

In a weird way the bomb allowed Japan not to make a full examination of how its leaders had failed her, lied to her, led her down a blind alley to disaster. It allowed a convenient story to be formed - that Japan had been victorious until a secret weapon had emerged from thin air and completely changed the game. The Emperor escaped by the skin of his teeth thanks to the Bomb. The horror of the bomb allowed Japan to recast itself as the ultimate victim of the war in the east. Given the unimaginable cruelty of Japanese rule in conquered territory, this was indeed a stroke of fortune for Japan.

[enterYourPassword]

Gremlinsateit

Not by the ones I know professionally and personally. They absolutely aren't racist. I base that on having never heard any of them say anything remotely racist and the fact most of them and their families are like a poster campaign of diversity - marriages of every mixture and several adopted children from different continents.

[Bolograph]

Japan's decision to capitulate came after the first bomb but before the second one

Is that right? I'd refer you to "Japan's Longest Day", by the Pacific War Research group, written in the 1960s with access to surviving participants. It is regarded as accurate in its account of the last few days of the war. There's a summary of the timeline of surrender here:

www.warbirdforum.com/end.htm

which is an accurate precis of the book (I have a copy; I don't think the translation has ever been published in the UK, but it's easily available in an American edition from Amazon).

AUGUST 9

The doves woke up early this Thursday. Furious about the meeting that had been blown off, leading to Russian entry, Togo et al. managed to get an SWC meeting going by 10:30 AM. Immediately, the SWC split into its two familiar factions and started going over the familiar arguments. Halfway through the meeting a message arrived saying that Nagasaki had been bombed at 11:00 that morning. This changed no opinions. The SWC meeting broke up at 1:00 PM with no decision having been made.

That afternoon the arguments were repeated in a full cabinet meeting lasting from 2:30 to 10:00 PM. The Home Minister explicitly predicted that a coup would likely happen if the government ordered surrender. The meeting had no result.

Suzuki then, after consultation with Hirohito, called a SWC meeting for 11:50 PM, to be held in the presence of the emperor, an unprecedented, although perfectly legal, procedure.

[CaveMum]

Documentary series on Yesterday this evening called Horror in the East about Japan and WW2 for those that might be interested.

[AntiqueSinger]

Omg! Like a fool I read last page of this thread and got curious. Googled Nanking. Have never read anything that bad. Ever. I feel sick and don't want to sleep just in case I have a nightmare. Bloody hell. Those poor people. Those poor women.

[WandaFuca]

CaveMum - I managed to spot that series in my Favourites listing and set it to record to watch later. I guess it'll be repeated, probably in the early hours, or later this week. I have Yesterday and the History channels and PBS America listed in my Favourites. They are often good resources for filling in those gaps of history we never learned at school. (And probably we shouldn't have been told about those things when we were young.)

[MysteriesOfTheOrganism]

I don't believe that killing a hundred thousand people with one bomb is MORALLY different from killing the same number with a million bullets or a million conventional bombs. The difference is perhaps emotional: one bomb highlights the horror of war more than years of conventional battles.

The only real issue is whether or not it was a completely gratuitous act - the equivalent of lining up 100,000 people and executing them by firing squad.

I think it was clearly NOT gratuitous. It was horrible, but then war is. But it was definitely NOT an atrocity.

[mathanxiety]

They were already meeting on the night of 9-10 August when news of the Nagasaki bomb arrived, and they were meeting because they had been completely shaken by the Soviet entry into war, which scuppered all their hopes, made the threat of immediate and unanticipated physical invasion on an almost unprotected flank real, and provoked the crisis meeting.

In August 1945 the US was left with only a handful of cities above 100,000 population to bomb. Over sixty cities had already been burned. B-29s dropped thousands of tonnes of bombs on Tokyo and other cities unopposed from spring, 1945. The sea blockade meant Japan was facing starvation. The remaining fleet was sunk in Tokyo Bay. Japan faced starvation.

From the United States Strategic Bombing Survey 1946 report:
'Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 [the date of the planned American invasion], Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated'

The US Strategic Bombing Survey report is clear that Soviet entry into the war against Japan had been a separate development that Japan had had to consider. Japan had been aware of this possibility from April, when the USSR had stated it would not renew the non-aggression pact with Japan. Though entry of the USSR into the conflict was a possibility, Japan hoped Stalin would remain out of the war and might instead seek to persuade the other Allies to drop their unconditional surrender demand. Their persistent feelers were rebuffed, but Japanese intelligence had missed the massing of Soviet troops and still did not anticipate invasion by the USSR, especially by one of the invasion routes (the Greater Khingan mountains, which were thought to be impassable).

On 11 July 1945 Molotov had refused to sign a peace treaty with Japan, but even still, Japanese hopes were still pinned on the Soviets not invading and focused on invasion from the Pacific. Troops were siphoned from China and Korea and from western Japan to better defend the southern home islands and the east of Honshu and Hokkaido.

The declaration of war by the USSR came late on August 8th and an hour later in early August 9th Soviet troops poured into Manchuria and proved unstoppable. Hokkaido was exposed and so was the rest of northern and western Japan.

The crisis that provoked the SWC meeting was not the overnight destruction of yet another city but the ease with which the Soviets had overrun Manchuria and the fact that they were poised to invade Hokkaido from the west (defence forces were dug in in the east) and dictate their own terms on the Japanese. The Japanese chose to capitulate to the US and negotiate for the preservation of the Emperor rather than taking their chances with a Soviet invasion.

[Bolograph]

I'm sceptical about the strategic bombing survey's conclusions.

The same survey argued that the strategic bombing of Germany had little or no effect on the outcome of the war, which is now held by serious historians (Overy, notably, but he's hardly the only one) to be almost entirely incorrect. The only reason why output doesn't completely collapse relative to 1943 is that (cf. Tooze) the German war economy was in a completely unprepared state and therefore some of the one-time efficiency gains Speer was able to obtain, such as mobilising women and stopping some of the ludicrous interference in production by the Army, cancel out some of the bombing, but the trajectory was sharply downwards. Every barrel firing shells upwards over Berlin was a barrel not firing the same shells eastward at Russian tanks, every plane being shot down by P51s over the Ruhr is a plane not strafing invasion beaches, etc: the bombing of Germany both destroyed and tied up vast amounts of materiel and capability, and to claim that Germany's war effort was not affected by it is just absurd. So I think we should treat the conclusions of the bombing survey - decent people who were horrified by the consequences of bombing, and therefore unwilling to accept it as either necessary or effective - with caution.

Additionally, although the Japanese civilians were starving and had no fuel, the Army and Air Force had reserves of food and fuel that would have sustained a long campaign. Claims that mass civilian suffering would have catalysed a surrender are a case of naive Americans projecting their own political and ethical framework onto something entirely foreign, and assuming that the Japanese military command would have seen mass starvation as making military "success" irrelevant. I don't think there's much evidence for that, really.

And in any event, suppose Japan had continued until, say, December and then surrendered because of mass starvation. Assuming that strategic bombing had continued at roughly the same tempo, with something akin to the Transportation Plan using fighter bombers off carriers and increasingly less remote islands to interdict bridges and marshalling yards, plus the Russian invasion, how many people would have died in comparison to the deaths and Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And not only in Japan, but in occupied territories?

Counter-factual history is hard, and the variables are not easy. But Japan post a contested surrender (there was a small coup attempt in August, cf. Japan's Longest Day, but a surrender absent the atomic bombs would have been more likely to provoke a serious coup attempt) and post an further four months' starvation would have been less governable and less capable of recovery than was in fact the case.