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?

Ummmm yes and that is what I was saying BUT it was not all of the Japanese leaders. If Japan really wanted to surrender then they hold their hands up - easy peasy.

I actually find that quite patronising, which I suspect was not your intent.

I think it's perfectly possible to come at this argument 'cold', as it were, and still feel that a net saving of lives was a good idea.

Japan could have surrendered. There was a huge amount of infighting going on. Prolonging the war - which was the consequence of the infighting - was costing thousands upon thousands of lives a day, many of them the lives of non-combatants.

Obliterating cities is very obviously awful. Pyres of Tamil cholera victims deep in the mountains of Thailand are harder to see.

Yes there was a minority of high level of civilians in Japan trying to push for peace & hoping the Russians would help. The military commanders however would not countenance surrender and they held the power

That’s a world away from “had already decided to surrender”

How do you feel about the Japanese children, young teenage boys, being forced into being Kamikaze pilots? Or the children dying of starvation in Japanese POW camps? Do those children matter.

And there was also an attempted coup by disaffected army officers even after the Emperor finally decided to surrender. They wanted to continue the war.

Why does it need to be all the leaders? They knew Japan wanted to surrender, they could have delayed the bombs.

But the US saw their chances to drop their toys were running out.

You have a child’s understanding of history.

Now you are just being silly.

Well the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces must have been a child too then.

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

Horrific.

Are you trying to say we did the Japanese a favour?

Why does it need to be all the leaders? They knew Japan wanted to surrender, they could have delayed the bombs.
SOME Japanese putting out peace feelers is not the same as the council agreeing that they were prepared to surrender unconditionally.

Prolonging the war was costing thousands of lives a day. But yeah, sure, drag things on by another fortnight and watch another 150,000 people go to their graves.

Exactly @DismantledKing and given that the emperor was regarded as divine in Japan at that time, the fact they even considered it speaks volumes of their mindset

For some, death was preferable to surrender

Not doing anything was also making a judgement. Not stopping the war was making the judgement that the camps, civilians and military, could be left to suffer and die, that Japan could continue to terrorise millions of people in Asia.

Not doing their utmost to stop the war would not be a neutral act.

The excerpt from this link, which does cite sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

If I was a peasant farmer with a son of 14 or 15 who was likely to be taken to be a kamikaze pilot in the near future I think I would have been very very grateful that the war was over and that the leaders who were quite happy to treat my child as cannon fodder were gone.

Saw the film yesterday. It is nuanced - as is the character of Oppenheimer.
It's worth a watch if you like films that make you think - and not just about the ethics of nuclear war. The relationship between science and politics, how voices are silenced for expediency and people "cancelled" is at times even more chilling than our ability to destroy the world.

I hope none of you rabid pro-bombers have been to Japan. I’d hate to see your smug faces there.

You seriously think a farmer would be grateful for his nation being the target of a nuclear attack?
Christ alive

Do you really think they wouldn't be relieved that their sons weren't going to be thrown away as cannon fodder?

I have sons and grandsons and their lives matter more to me than who is winning a war.

I can’t believe how simplistic and idealistic some people are on here! You can not ascribe 21st century ideas and thinking to WWII. It must be lovely to see the world through your rose tinted lenses.

Well your missing out then, because IT’S BLOODY FANTASTIC!

There is no way that you genuinely believe anyone would ever be grateful for a nuclear attack on their country.
There is no way you’re discussing this in good faith.

*you’re