Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be uncomfortable with the film Oppenheimer?

584 replies

LKM23 · 21/07/2023 18:23

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?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
23
MissEDashwood19 · 21/07/2023 19:53

MissyGirlie · 21/07/2023 19:37

OP, I haven't RTFT, because I haven't the patience. I have however changed my user name, because what I am about to say will be very outing.

I would suggest that you catch up sharpish on the history of Asia under the Japanese, c1930-1945. The Japanese were brutal in China. They carried out medical experiments on many, many human beings, who they referred to as 'maruta' - logs. They killed thousands when they took Nanking.

I know the most about Malaya. My father's Eurasian family was there when the Japanese army came ashore (not having declared war). They were utterly, horrendously brutal. Somewhere over 20,000 Chinese were killed in what was call the Syonan Daikensho - the Great Singapore Inspection - in the course of about a month just after the fall of Singapore. Other Chinese were killed up and down the peninsula, in their hundreds and thousands, at least one whole village rounded up and the buildings set on fire with the people inside.

My own family had a terrible time. My father's father was killed when the ship in which he tried to leave Singapore, packed with civilians, was shelled and sunk by a Japanese destroyer whose captain knew that there were hundreds of civilians on board. My grandmother was interned and came out weighing about 5 stone. One of my uncles was recaptured with some others after escaping from a POW camp; he was beaten repeatedly and finally executed. It was botched, and none of the men was killed outright by the firing squad, they all had to finished off by an officer with a pistol (iirc).

My oldest cousin was also a POW (he was very much older than me). We don't know how he died, because the Japanese falsified the records of the camp he was in (Labuan - no survivors, none, not one) - to disguise the massacre at the end of the war, when the death marched the last of the men and finally shot them. Another cousin had a narrow escape from being forced into prostitution.

You think that's bad? The worst story of the lot was my father's uncle and aunt. They and another 60 or more people were massacred at the rubber estate where they had taken refuge. Men, women, and children, including babes in arms. Killed in cold blood, with bayonets. Nobody knows why: again, no survivors. At about the same time, there was a massacre of dozens of Chinese on a nearby pineapple estate.

Repeat that over and over and over again, through China, Burma, what is now Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, what is now Indonesia, what is now Malaysia. Asians were chipped off in their thousands to work on the Burma-Siam railways; thousands died. Javanese were shipped over to work in Singapore. when the work ran out, the Japanese turned them out to starve in the streets: I used to know someone whose brother's (cousin's?) job at that time was taking a handcart round to collect up the bodies. By the end of the war, about 10,000 people A DAY were dying of starvation across Japanese-occupied Asia. The Japanese people were being urged to fight to the last man, woman and child. One faction in government was desperate to continue the war, and orders had been issued for the killing of all prisoners of war. All of them. Tens of thousands of people. In places, Japanese army supply lines had collapsed and the troops were (and this you will not believe, but plenty of accounts attest to it) eating their Indian POWs (see John Baptist Crasta, 'Eaten by the Japanese'.

So before you start feeling too awfully sorry for the Japanese, consider all this. Consider also that ALL Japanese war dead - including the war criminals like the man who was probably responsible for the death of my cousin - are enshrined at Yaukuni, and influential Japanese politicians still go and pay their respects there. Remember Shinzo Abe? Yup, he did.

I think the atom bombs were terrible, but I think that on balance they saved lives. I don't blame modern Japanese for what their forebears did. But I can't bear people condemning the Allies for the atom bombs when they have no idea what Japan did in Asia, mostly to Asians but also to tens of thousands of European and Indian POWs.

Thank you for sharing. The Japanese well and truly evaded justice for the crimes they committed. Japanese soldiers committed atrocities on an industrial scale. Most Europeans don't know enough about their crimes, so the continued lies and misrepresentation of the war by the Japanese goes unchallenged.

EmmaPaella · 21/07/2023 19:54

How do you know it is from the Americans POV OP? What with not having seen it.

Maireas · 21/07/2023 19:55

Oppenheimer was a lifelong socialist. He only got clearance because the US needed his scientific expertise. In the McCarthy era he lost his clearance.
He was motivated to be part of the Manhattan project because he knew the Nazis were working on the Bomb. He knew they had to develop it first. Can you imagine if they had developed it? ...
He learned Sanskrit to read the Hindu scriptures, where "the destroyer of worlds" comes from.

Iwasafool · 21/07/2023 19:55

PorpoiseWithPurpose · 21/07/2023 19:37

No one has a problem with it apart from OP.

Maybe she thinks it glorifies Klaus Barbie?

Maireas · 21/07/2023 19:56

Iwasafool · 21/07/2023 19:55

Maybe she thinks it glorifies Klaus Barbie?

😂😂

Frabbits · 21/07/2023 19:56

Won't somebody think of the children?

You haven't even seen it.

MissyGirlie · 21/07/2023 19:56

it's not civilians, it's not the majority of people.
I can't speak for the civilians en bloc - and some of them were decent - but the army was rotten from cellar to attic. Yes, there was the odd 'good Japanese' in uniform, but the military culture was utterly brutal.

IMHO opinion, the atom bombs resulted in a net saving of lives. Not just the Allied troops who would have died fighting their way island by island, not the Japanese civilians and soldiers who would have been killed, but the thousands of Asian civilians who were dying under Japanese rule across vast chunks of Asia.

TheoTheopolis23 · 21/07/2023 19:56

I've had a woman on a flight tell me Syed never visit Turkey because of Turkish behaviour on Cyprus - they did a tour when visiting it and found out about how bad the Turks are.

I pointed out that the Turks who make policy and the Turks on Cyprus are a tiny nber of people.... And that, in the subject of policy, they are not even a democracy. The receptionist in our hotel in Turkey told us people who rebel against the state are interned indefinitely. That they )he and others who disagree with policies) are angry, but also scared there.

I said depriving them, ordinary people, of income was hardly the solution.
She had little to argue back.

This is similar to talking about ordinary civilian people in a state as being inclined or responsible for things they are not, anywhere (look at the UKs population's feelings about the invasion of Irak etc) let alone in non democracies.

Superfood · 21/07/2023 19:58

MotherofGorgons · 21/07/2023 19:11

I don't think either Oppenheimer or Barbie are what you think they are. Apparently, both are brilliantly subversive.

If the Barbie movie were in any way at all 'subversive', it wouldn't be an officially approved Barbie (TM) product.

But well done for taking all that marketing and PR at face value.

Maireas · 21/07/2023 19:58

Prolonging the war and invading Japan would have cost millions of lives.
I am just thankful I don't have to make such decisions. It is truly terrible.
This sounds like a fascinating film about a very contentious subject, I'm definitely going to see it.

Thisismynewusername1 · 21/07/2023 20:00

Why is everyone focussing on the war and the bomb’s role in it?

that was nothing to do with Oppenheimer. He didn’t decide to deploy, and is not responsible for any of that.

he was a physicist who’s work was used to develop the bomb. He devised the fast chain reactions.

History tells us he deeply regretted that his work had the consequences it did.

i can’t see why people think the film is painting him as a villain/hero. In my mind it’s similar to a film about Marie curie, both did ground breaking scientists. It’s just that Oppenheimers led to where it did.

WhatADrabCarpet · 21/07/2023 20:01

Best not to watch it then, but, I suggest that you actually google his life and works.
You may find that you think a bit differently about him.

Just saying.

DismantledKing · 21/07/2023 20:01

So you’ve posted a thread making assertions about a film that you’ve not seen? Right.
The atomic bombings were also justified to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied personnel.

SunnyEgg · 21/07/2023 20:01

The huge number of scientists involved to get to the end point was incredible

Many fled from Germany

TheoTheopolis23 · 21/07/2023 20:01

I can't speak for the civilians en bloc - and some of them were decent - but the army was rotten from cellar to attic. Yes, there was the odd 'good Japanese' in uniform, but the military culture was utterly brutal.

The German military was similar.

The Russian military, Im not sure about - but I read they raped thousands upon thousands of German women during invasion and there were mass terminations in the months that followed.

We could speculate as to why the Allied military were apparently not (?) Democratic countries with more civil liberties and rights? They were supplied with food etc throughout, so didn't become as desperate and brutal as the losing side (??)

(I don't know, I'm just reaching for some theories).

Lacucuracha · 21/07/2023 20:02

Maireas · 21/07/2023 19:58

Prolonging the war and invading Japan would have cost millions of lives.
I am just thankful I don't have to make such decisions. It is truly terrible.
This sounds like a fascinating film about a very contentious subject, I'm definitely going to see it.

What a load of shit.

Read this

…the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs

A woman floats a paper lantern on the Motoyasu River in Hiroshima to mark the 65th anniversary of the World War II atomic bombing of the city. Representatives from more than 70 nations, including for the first time the United States, joined tens of tho...

Op-Ed: U.S. leaders knew we didn't have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it anyway

We've been taught that the U.S. had to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. Historical evidence shows Japan would have surrendered anyway.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs

BrandyandGinger · 21/07/2023 20:02

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Narrow-Road-Deep-North-ebook/dp/B00J4SNT48/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=MZC7BNSI39ON&keywords=the+narrow+road+to+the+deep+north&qid=1689965501&sprefix=the+narr%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1

This is an absolutely brilliant, but harrowing, book about WWII in Asia.

The Flowers of War by Geiling Yan is set during the Rape of Nanking.

Lacucuracha · 21/07/2023 20:03

tobee · 21/07/2023 18:58

What a dum comment.

You can’t even spell dumb 🙄

Read the article I just posted.

SammyScrounge · 21/07/2023 20:03

I d say it was as well that Oppenheimer got there.before Hitler's scientists.

saltinesandcoffeecups · 21/07/2023 20:03

Thisismynewusername1 · 21/07/2023 20:00

Why is everyone focussing on the war and the bomb’s role in it?

that was nothing to do with Oppenheimer. He didn’t decide to deploy, and is not responsible for any of that.

he was a physicist who’s work was used to develop the bomb. He devised the fast chain reactions.

History tells us he deeply regretted that his work had the consequences it did.

i can’t see why people think the film is painting him as a villain/hero. In my mind it’s similar to a film about Marie curie, both did ground breaking scientists. It’s just that Oppenheimers led to where it did.

Because like or not he is the face of the atomic bomb. Even he recognized that. I mean it would have been someone all the scientists of the day were racing towards it, but he was the first.

Lacucuracha · 21/07/2023 20:04

Lifeinlists · 21/07/2023 18:45

Max Hastings in his review in last Saturday's Times made the point that more than 300,000 people were killed in Tokyo, ie many more than ended up dead after both atomic bombs, and Japan still had no intention of surrendering.

War is nasty but I'm actually tempted to see it after reading his review. It seems to explore the conflicts, both personal and political.

Again, more lies.

littleburn · 21/07/2023 20:05

I don't think making a film about something automatically means you are 'celebrating' it, which is what your OP seems to assume. I'm seeing the film tomorrow, but Oppenheimer was famously very conflicted about 'his' creation and Christopher Nolan is a thoughtful director, so I doubt it's a flag-waving 'USA, USA!' type film.

PhotoDad · 21/07/2023 20:06

I recently re-watched a TV adaptation of Frayn's play "Copenhagen." (It's available on Amazon for a couple of quid.) A thoughtful investigation of the moral complexities here, in this case about Heisenberg, the scientist in control of the Nazi nuclear programme. He claimed after the war that he had deliberately failed...

saltinesandcoffeecups · 21/07/2023 20:06

saltinesandcoffeecups · 21/07/2023 20:03

Because like or not he is the face of the atomic bomb. Even he recognized that. I mean it would have been someone all the scientists of the day were racing towards it, but he was the first.

Crap…posted too soon.

Somebody had to be famous for the discovery that made the bombs possible. It’s no different than Newton getting credit for gravity, right?