To be uncomfortable with the film Oppenheimer?

[LKM23]

I haven't seen the film, I'm sure it's a brilliant thriller and will be a Blockbuster hit. I don't think I'll watch it though, it makes my feel really uncomfortable.

It feels like a man who at the end of the day killed thousands of people and damaged millions is being celebrated and turned into a hero.

I lived in Japan for 10 years in my twenties. I visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spent a lot of time with people both directly and indirectly affected by the dropping of the bombs. Those scars are real and still there and will be for a very very long time. It changed Japan and the people who live there forever and at the end of the day I think he was an awful person.

AIBU?

You’re a fool.

When arguments run out, insults arrive

@GrinAndVomit absolutely disgusting comment, they were fighting for freedom and it's thanks to them that the allies won the war

Which innocent children would those be? Clearly not the Chinese ones, or the Malay ones or the ones starving in POW camps whose lives were saved by Japan surrendering when it did.

The commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, Henry “Hap” Arnold, gave a strong indication of his views in a public statement 11 days after Hiroshima was attacked. Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said that “the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”

“It was a mistake.... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” —Adm. William “Bull” Halsey

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/

Yes with the way POWs were treated it is highly likely that as Japan was invaded the policy would have changed. I'm sure all the POWs would have been invited to tea with the Emperor and greeted as honoured guests.

You realise those survivors would have been the witnesses at the war crime trials, do you think their guards would have wanted them to survive?

If our government were committing atrocities, would you say it would be justified for us and our children to have an atom bomb dropped on us?
After all, that would be a reasonable way of honouring the adults fighting against the atrocities our government were committing.

I have to say, apart from MissyGirlie whose position at least is based on personal history and in that way understandable, the other defenders on this thread appear brainwashed - now talking about freedom (!) Soon they'll start on the axis of evil and civilisational conflict. And how America saves us all. I think I've seen enough so I'll bow out.

No, the US had clear evidence that the Japanese wanted to surrender before the bombs.

The US argued over trivial things like whether the Emperor would be tried in a war crimes court. Because they wanted to drop the bombs.

Obliterating entire cities full of innocent civilians is not the answer.

@yogibutton I agree, nuclear weapons are horrendous. In 1945 we didn't realise quite how horrendous.

I would urge you, though, to read up on what life was like in Asia under Japanese rule. It might give you an inkling of why I feel as I do. The suffering was horrific and affected all levels of society, people of every age. I've done a lot of primary research in this area (archives, interviews) so I do know what I am talking about.

You privilege is showing. If it wasn’t for the sacrifices of others then you wouldn’t have the freedom to express your daft opinions.

And @Lacucuracha ??? That still doesn’t change the fact that they absolutely were not planning to surrender before Hiroshima and even after second atomic bomb they still had to be ordered by the emperor

They absolutely were trying to surrender. They had asked the Soviets to broker the terms before the bombs.

You’re just inventing your own history now.

As I said you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts

japan documented their decisions very clearly throughout the war. Those records are clear. After the dropping of 2 atomic bombs, the imperial council was split on whether to surrender and the emperor had to order them to surrender

Off mn there’s schools of thought anyway, historians tend to divide into theories

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/debate-over-japanese-surrender/

No they did not have clear evidence - what they did have was a knowledge that a few members of the Emperor's Cabinet were unhappy and were testing out the Russians to see if they would intervene on their behalf. I would imagine rather like the fact that a few of Hitler's cohort were unhappy, knew the end was inevitable and were looking to save themselves in the future world. Should the Allies have stopped their advance on Berlin? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Japan's leaders (the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the "Big Six") were privately making entreaties to the publicly neutral Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms more favorable to the Japanese. While maintaining a sufficient level of diplomatic engagement with the Japanese to give them the impression they might be willing to mediate, the Soviets were covertly preparing to attack Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea (in addition to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) in fulfillment of promises they had secretly made to the United States and the United Kingdom at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences.

You’re entitled to your own opinion too, but not your own facts.

Nope, the US was intercepting Japanese comms. They knew Japan wanted to surrender.

My young grandfathers had just finished fighting their way across Europe. The next step would have been to transfer them to the far east to join in with the invasion of Japan. I’m glad that didn’t have to happen.

If the Japanese were so ready to surrender why didn't they surrender after Hiroshima? Why wait 3 days for another bomb to drop? Even then they didn't surrender until the 15th, another six days when more bombs could drop.

Russia didn't declare war on Japan until the 7th August 1945, the day after Hiroshima so how were the Japanese preparing to surrender because of the Russians before Hiroshima?