‘There wasn’t enough about the horror’: Hiroshima survivors react to Oppenheimer

DigitalTraveler42 , 1 month ago

That's probably why the movie was titled Oppenheimer and not Hiroshima & Nagasaki, because the movie was focused on the man and his work and the regrets that came from that work, while nations celebrated the end of a second World War.

This movie was the type of movie that was always going to upset someone, and while it sucks that Japanese citizens were killed, their Emperor's military might was a brutally murderous raping scourge set loose on that section of the world, while also working with some of the other worst regimes of the world. Overall Japan fucked around and attacked first, did a lot of horrible shit to many different peoples, made some truly horrible friends, and then found out in one of the most devastating ways possible, I feel bad for the innocent civilians, but it was always ever going to end the way it did, if not a lot worse.

I'm just glad Japan grew to be what it is now and that it chose better ways to engage with the world than more attempts at domination, even though Anime, Manga, video games, and more have dominated the world's hearts.

Sunforged , 1 month ago

but it was always ever going to end the way it did, if not a lot worse.

This takeaway is mythologization of America's most reprehensible act.

While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.”

The principal argument mounted to justify the use of atomic bombs — that they would quickly end the war and avoid an invasion that could result in as many as one million casualties — doesn’t hold much weight. Instead, historical evidence more strongly indicates America’s desire to circumvent the need for negotiations with the Soviet Union over the future of East Asia. The Potsdam Conference, held by Allied leadership in the summer of 1945, aimed to determine the postwar settlement in Europe. The United States did not want to be forced into similar negotiations — with the Soviets at the table — for the postwar settlement of the Pacific.

We murdered 210,000 civilians because of a perceived threat to capitalism.

sheepy , 1 month ago

While I'm not defending the use of the bombs as bargaining chips, Japan would have suffered the same fate as Germany under Soviet rule. North Japan and South Japan, alongside a Tokyo Wall, would have not been just a "threat to capitalism".

june , 1 month ago

So it's better to melt the faces off of hundreds of thousands of innocent people than to risk a two state solution?

DragonTypeWyvern , 1 month ago

They weren't innocent, they were willing and eager subjects of a fascist state that had killed over 20 million Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos amongst others, and there was never a chance of it being two state solution.

If there's a reason Truman dropped the bomb as an "anti-communist" measure it was to just to irredeemably prove we had them and it wasn't propaganda.

In the real world, however, Imperial Japan was an irrational state that was trying to force a conditional surrender in a war the leaders never thought they could win in the first place.

The USA waited three days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a surrender. It didn't happen. That alone proves there wasn't one coming from other circumstances.

Sunforged , 1 month ago

Are you a willing and eager subject to the current genocide being funded with your taxpayer dollars?

DragonTypeWyvern , 1 month ago

No, and unlike your bitch ass I've been tear gassed to prove it.

Fortunately, we can rest assured that the vast majority of Japanese citizens supported the war. Not only were are they as a people still largely unrepentant, we know what happened to the people who did resist:

They were killed or shipped to Korea as slaves.

BrikoX OP Mod , 1 month ago

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