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?

Excellent example here

I’m not seeing anyone promoting the bombing.

Just that this was not /is not a clear cut black and white decision that some would like it to be.

in isolation, dropping bombs on cities of people is wrong. Not sure there are many that would disagree with that. But this decision was not made in isolation. It was a case of which was the least worse option.

Option 1 - The war goes on for maybe weeks, months - who knows - with tens of thousands dying daily (men women and children) in all sorts of barbaric ways. A fact that I think some overlook as it’s not well taught in this country (we focus on the European aspect of the war).

Option 2 - Drop a bomb killing also men, women and children also in horrible ways - but that being the end of the war and no more death.

Option 2 was chosen - personally I’m glad I’ve never had to make such a choice.

No one on this thread will ever have to make such a choice. It allows certain posters to make black and white statements that don’t reflect the nuances and balanced judgements of the decisions taken in August 1945.

I was just coming on to say just this.

The dropping of the bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, horrific as they were, brought the war to an end. Japan were refusing to capitulate until they happened. In the end, however you wish to view it, they saved lives. Japanese lives as well as allied personnel as a city a day was being wiped out by conventional bombing.

My father was a prisoner of the japanese and the number that they killed and tortured cannot be counted. They run into hundreds of thousands and that is not counting the Romusha (native labourers) or the Chinese that they slaughtered in the 25 years running up to WW2. As the war looked to be coming to a close the prisoners of war were made to dig huge trenches as the order had gone out for them all to be massacred. They were a brutal race.

Had those 2 bombs not been dropped my father would not have come home and I, and my 2 brothers, would not be here. That goes for thousands of other families, a whole generation that would not be here if it weren’t for Oppenheimer. The men who did come home suffered from the effects of japanese brutality for the rest of their lives and, as a knock on effect, so did their families. I have first hand knowledge of that. So, your sympathies are misplaced.

Yes, the bombs were terrible but so was what lead up to them. They did, however bring an end to terror and suffering in the Far East. They were a necessary evil but I pray to God that they never need to be used again.

They were a brutal race.

It's a strange thing. The numerous Japanese people I know are kind, polite and gentle, much more so than most British people. I wonder where the brutality of the war came from? Perhaps from a view that non-Japanese were inferior and separate?

Snap - my research scientist DD said the same.

The whole point of Barbie is that it isn’t what people expect. Given the director it would be bizarre if it was a fluffy romcom.

But nowhere in that quote mentions surrender, it just states an opinion that they were hopeless, doesn't mean the opinion was same on the Japanese side.

It's called "having your cake and eating it". Getting loads of money off people with the pretence of undermining it.

My daughter also wants to see it. She's 12. So I might have to go with her, if only to challenge the idea that a massively misogynist capitalist enterprise fronted by Margot f*ing Robbie and lining the pockets of a company that has damaged girls and women for decades is in any way "feminist".

@Lacucuracha if the Japanese were going to surrender before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how do you explain the timeline:
6th of August- Hiroshima was bombed
9th of August- Nagasaki was bombed
15th of August- Japan officially surrenders

So over a week between the bombing of Nagasaki and surrender. Why was that?

I am very grateful to posters, particularly @MissyGirlie, who highlight the atrocities visited on Asia and especially China. I have often found people in the UK do not seem to know about what I have heard termed the 'forgotten holocaust.' I am glad there seems to be so much knowledge about it here, as it hurts to think of all that suffering being brushed under the carpet. My ancestors were lucky to escape Singapore, thanks to the ties with Britain, for which I am forever grateful. I have been told I am privileged to be critical of targeting of civilians, and that may be true, as I didn't live through the war. But as I mourn the civilians massacred in Nanking, I also mourn those killed in the nuking of Japan.

@Againstmachine

But nowhere in that quote mentions surrender, it just states an opinion that they were hopeless, doesn't mean the opinion was same on the Japanese side.

Agree with you on that, Okinawa had shown the US that even when a situation was hopeless many Japanese were going to continue to try and inflict casualties….not just stick their arms up in the air and surrender.

…and Admiral Halsey’s comment attached to that quote needs to be read with at least a bit of awareness of the level of intensity of inter service rivalry.

I suspect part of the reason so many find it difficult to see the Japanese in WWII as "bad guys" is that we have internalized to such an extreme degree the white-oppressor, non-white-victim narrative. There is an very deep assumption, that people don't realize they are making, that the Japanese, in this case, couldn't really be the aggressors, or as bad as reported at the time, surely that must be some kind of colonialist spin.

It's the same reason they struggle with the idea that some at that time tended to see the Japanese as a whole in a very negative way. I suspect that most of these people were well aware that some Japanese peasant on his farm might be a perfectly nice person and certainly wasn't making military decisions. And that the elite were pushing a certain agenda. But what they experienced and saw was not just the Emperor and a few baddies. They saw not just a few people, but what seemed like a whole culture that saw other human beings as sub-humans who could be treated in ways most British people would not treat their dogs, with a kind of deliberate, premeditated, highly intelligent, cruelty. The question they asked themselves, and I know this from my own grandmother, was what kind of culture produces so many people who would behave that way or even feel it was no big deal?

It's not very comparable to something like Muslim terrorism, because that does not seem to reflect normative attitudes among Muslims across the world.

It's very difficult to separate that kind of feeling about a culture from one's feelings about the people themselves.

As far as the wrongness of targeting civilians, yes, which is why it's now a crime. But it wasn't then and everyone did it.

Yes. This wasn't just confined to WWII. You might find it interesting to watch the film Silence, about Jesuit missionaries to Japan. Their view of outsiders was something most of us in the west find difficult to understand or imagine.

Though it's worth remembering that politeness is not always just about kindness. It can also have to do with hierarchy, knowing your place, honour, and other social values. Honour based societies can be both extremely polite and extremely brutal and unforgiving.

The surrender after WWII had a deep effect on the Japanese psyche. The idea that they could be the losers was deeply shaming to them, and it very much changed their attitude toward military endevours. Some people say that it changed their culture in a profound way.

@DuesToTheDirt Yes, I think in Japan at the time, non-Japanese were definitely seen as inferior and separate. Look at how Chinese and Korean people were treated.

And then you've got the treatment of allied POWs, mainly due the cultural belief at the time that no honourable soldier would ever surrender.

Unfortunately, the Japanese regime in the 30s and 40s was as militaristic, brutal and racist as the Nazis were.

Are we only allowed to make films about nice people and happy things now?

It’s a historical biopic. Making a film about Oppenheimer doesn’t imply any endorsement of his work, ffs.

If total war was brought to the Japanese mainland, it would have killed more allied personnel, and especially a lot more Japanese people; than the two bombs ever did.

Is there any indication Oppenheimer wasn’t “nice” though?

he was a scientist whose work in physics happened to lead to the development of a destructive weapon.

we know he was conflicted about it. But it wasn’t his choice to actually drop those bombs.

I wonder what the lead scientist who developed Thalidomide feels? Is it their fault thousands of babies were affected? Or was it the people who licensed it for morning sickness?

it’s not like Oppenheimer set out to kill millions, or ever intended to.

Thalidomide was and remains an important drug. Chirality wasn't understood when it was licensed and therefore its consequences weren't foreseeable https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160208124237.htm
Earlier posters criticised the lack of medical care for Japanese survivors of the bombs and allied military personnel who were exposed intentionally or not to the after-effects of the bombs or other nuclear tests.
The sad fact is that the harmful effects of radioactivity weren't understood and people would have had no idea of how to treat or help victims. Later obfuscation and cover-ups are unforgivable, but no less likely to happen today.
I would recommend Kate Moore's book The Radium Girls to anyone interested in how society, business, governments and the legal system react to harm caused by ignorance of novel discoveries. The rush to implement AI, EVs and renewable energy may lead to similar outcomes.

YABVU, you can't erase history.

A long time ago I read a book about thalidomide and how they worked out what was causing the deformities. All the deformities can happen naturally but suddenly lots more were happening. One theory was it was pollution or nuclear fallout. They got their clue as America hadn't licensed it and while the children were being born with the thalidomide damage all over europe in US army bases the women weren't having the same issue.

I probably read it 50 years ago but it was a fascinating detective story.

You have to twist things don't you. There were almost certainly families at home who would be relieved it was over, relieved their sons were coming home if they had been lucky enough to survive, relieved that their younger sons weren't going to have to go and sacrifice themselves.

There are probably some families who think it is great for their sons to go and die but it is hardly a normal reaction for a loving family.

I’m not testing anything. I’m using the exact words.

You think there were definitely Japanese families who were relieved about being the target of a nuclear bomb?

Not twisting*

The thing about the decision to drop the bomb is that we don't have conclusive proof of whether it was necessary or not. Historians genuinely disagree and each side marshals arguments (as in that Nation piece) to prove it. It's dishonest to present such an argument as definitive. We don't know and we're arguing with the benefit of hindsight.

for that matter you can find some hardcore pacifists arguing that the entire war was unnecessary (yes even against Hitler).

there was very real racism against the Japanese during the war itself: see the USA's absolutely shameful internment of Japanese-Americans.

as I said though, war is ugly. You can make the "but children" argument for every decision during a war. One of my grandfathers (American) was in the Navy in the Pacific during the war, the other (British) was in Europe in the Army. I don't think, from what they said about their experiences, that they had any illusions about it.