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‘US government documents admit that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington's Cold War on the Soviet Union. Ben Norton reviews the historical record.’

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[-] Aru@lemmygrad.ml 39 points 2 years ago

The level of propaganda to not only justify turning innocent civilians into dust and basically fuck the land for the next life, but to also convince your population that it was necessary is something else

[-] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 42 points 2 years ago

Honestly it doesn't take any convincing to make Americans support atrocities. The US can just do them and Americans will invent justifications all on their own.

[-] Aru@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 2 years ago

I think it's because of patriotism "oh the US did this atrocity? Well I am usonian and I did nothing wrong, therefore the atrocity was ok".

[-] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 23 points 2 years ago

Yeah people here take things very personally even though no one supports the government much? I don't get it

[-] OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Every aspect of culture and education in the US is dedicated to drilling into the minds of people that the US are the most good, the most just, the most honest, that their systems of governance are based on these values, and the majority of people work hard towards maintaining that.

So when a USonian is faced with this narrative being broken, they fall back into cognitive dissonance. It's only recently we've seen a reversal of this to a significant scale, but ask anyone and they'll likely tell you that they still believe these things were true a couple decades ago and it's only now that the US has become bad.

Whatever the US has accused communists of doing to their people, the US has already perfected it.

[-] Sinister@hexbear.net 3 points 2 years ago

Moral superiority over even their alleged hwite brethern in Europe, is a FUNDAMENTAL part of the American Empire. Almost all things are seen by a Americans, through a lense of self-superiority. Every falling that an American espouses suddenly becomes a moral virtue that should be celebrated.

[-] Fuckass@hexbear.net 10 points 2 years ago

Lol this really is true. I remember in high school I came up with the conclusion “Japan needed to be nuked because they weren’t going to surrender” on my own since I’ve never looked into it prior

[-] lemmyseizethemeans@lemmygrad.ml 22 points 2 years ago

One thing missing from a lot of the dialogue is choice of targets because they wanted to perform bomb blast studies on virgin targets

Roll that over in your mind for a minute

[-] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That isn't taught in Burgerland schools and as far back as I can recall, it never has been. yea

[-] OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 years ago

They went as far as intentionally not bombing certain cities, to encourage refugees, industries and military offices to relocate there, so when they did bomb them later they'd inflict greater casualties and damage. They didn't do this explicitly to drop nukes, but the list of targets largely contained these cities.

[-] ComradeEd@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What? What is that supposed to mean?

[-] Lemmywontallowme@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 years ago

"Virgin", as in never being hit upon before, if you know what I fully mean...

[-] ComradeEd@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What.... NO. No they pecking didn't.

[-] Darkerseid@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

video summary: https://www.summarize.tech/youtu.be/5vMEgneKF10

there is a famous youtube video on this that go through all the military personnel memoirs and other documents about the lead up to the bombing. https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go

also watch oliver stone docuseries on american history (first 2 episodes)

[-] Fuckass@hexbear.net 8 points 2 years ago

My le bomb… le killed people?

[-] Sinister@hexbear.net 7 points 2 years ago

but le internet historian guy said muh both sides.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago

Japan's Holocaust was as bad as the Nazi's. They were killing, raping, mutilating, and enslaving millions of Chinese, Burmese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other peoples on a daily basis. Every extra day the Japanese empire was in power was another day of hell for millions of innocent people. Japan's rulers know the War was lost after Germany fell. They were happy to keep the killing going.

[-] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 31 points 2 years ago

I guess that justifies the murder of civilians for you?

By that logic, 9/11 was justified big-cool

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Please explain, in detail, why the lives of the Japanese civilians in Hiroshima were more important then the lives of the Korean/Burmese/Chinese people being killed every day?

[-] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 years ago

I don't think you understand what the word "civilian" means

[-] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 2 years ago

as mentioned in the video, Japan was already willing to surrender because of the USSR

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

If they were so willing, why didn't they just do it?

[-] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

perhaps "expected to be willing" would be a better description; see this comment

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 19 points 2 years ago

Your description of the conditions is correct but your conclusion is a non-sequitur. It does not follow logically that the only or best option to stop those atrocities was to mass murder civilians. Despite what the propaganda about the bombings that has since been inculcated into the western public claims, they were not in fact necessary for compelling Japan's surrender. There were already internal disputes about this in the Japanese leadership for some time, but after their decisive defeat in Manchuria at the hands of the Red Army the decision to surrender as soon as possible became pretty much unanimous. Every day that went by was another day that the Soviets took more territory and came closer and closer - through the Kurils - to the Japanese home islands. The Japanese imperialists knew just as well as the Nazis that they stood a much better chance of avoiding punishment for their crimes (and some of them even being allowed to retain some power in the post war state) if they surrendered to the US rather than the USSR. Moreover we now know that the US leaders knew this. Their primary motivations were to have a live weapons test and to intimidate the Soviet Union.

[-] Dolores@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago

you probably know this but for the sake of clarity, the atomic bombs were dropped on August 6th, and a few days later on the 9th. Soviets invaded on the 7th. their plans for Hokkaido were for the 24th, and cancelled by the surrender.

post war assessments make clear that soviets' comprehensive destruction of the Kwantung army was perceived by parts of the japanese and us governments as sufficient on its own to force the surrender, but your comment sort of reads like the americans dropped the bombs after the soviet's success to force the japanese to surrender to them instead, which is chronologically unsound.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

You say there were 'options,' yet somehow managed to avoid actually naming them.

What would you tell the Koreans/Chinese/Burmese whose families died while the negotiations stretched out?

[-] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Even after accepting your premise there is a huge amount of middle ground between doing nothing and nuking civilian centres.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Like what, exactly?

Remember two things. First were the Asian peoples who were being slaughtered by the Empire. Why should they go on suffering one extra day? The other is that Truman had an obligation to protect American lives; that was his sworn duty. Why should he allow any US service men to die to protect the lives fo Japaense?

[-] VolatileExhaustPipe@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 2 years ago

You don't have to compare atrocities of the scale of Nazi regimes or the Fascist Imperial Japanese regime.

[-] PatFussy@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

This video says a whole lot of nothing. It took 6 minutes to finally talk about people regretting, and that lasted another 5 minutes.

[-] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Pro tip: you need to unmute the audio. He starts going through the evidence after less than three minutes

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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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