Atomic Bombings of Japan

[DragonAsh]

@villa

My evidence lies in conversations with Japanese people, in Japanese revisionists being prominant, in Japanese politicians constinuing to make statements regarding the war indicating a refusal to accept responsibility, in Japanese text books continuing to downplay Japan’s atrocities etc. Those actions are not consistent with sincere apologies.

OK – here’s a place to start.

I’m not quite sure how you would define ‘revisionists’, nor how you would define ‘prominent’. If you’re in tune with Japanese politics you’ll no doubt be aware of the pretty fundamental shift in Japanese politics recently. The currently ruling party (DPJ) is regarded to be relatively liberal, and it replaced the previous, right-wing conservative party (LDP). Part of the problem with the LDP was that it simply didn’t do a very good job weeding out the really far-out ones among them. But while they made headlines, the far-right component from the early 90s certainly hasn’t been a major component within the whole party (note, for example, the LDP lost power for a year or so in 1993). They only make news when they said something stupid – think Michele Bachmann, or Sarah Palin. You can certainly say that the willingness of a politician to say something that stupid suggests a faction is still holding on to the wrong way of thinking.

So while I can understand your view on this – and lord knows I’m not defending idiots like Abe and the like – I can make a bit of a distinction between the government’s official stance vs random wankings of politicians throwing red meat to their supporters. Think Trent Lott, for example.

I’m curious about ‘conversations with Japanese people’. I know literally thousands of Japanese people. Several hundred current and former co-workers. Dozens of very, very close friends. And a couple dozen close family relatives-in-law. And even after some 25 years, I have yet to meet a one that, when the subject has come up (and it often does since I’m a non-Japanese) hasn’t expressed horror and sadness at what happened in WWII and Japan’s role in it. And that includes many that were alive and/or actually fought in the war. Are the Japanese people you meet really saying they aren’t sorry about what happened?

I am pretty familiar with the textbook and Yasukuni issues. And let me say that both issues have been blown way, way out of proportion. Yasukuni houses 2.5 million people, and it’s been around for over a hundred years. Exactly 12 are war criminals. The Shrine never has been about war criminals for the majority of its existence. But some Japanese politicians have in fact tried to be tactful and not go to the Shrine, out of respect for the Asian neighbors. Emperor Hirohito didn’t go. The last politician to go with fanfare was Koizumi (who, despite his trappings, was a conservative right-winger through-and-through; he needed to shore up his conservative base to offset the trouble he was making while privatizing the Post Office). The last couple PMs haven’t gone, as far as I remember, and the current PM isn’t going to go. So really - the debate over whether a Japanese politician should be allowed to go to the private place of worship of his choice, hasn’t been an issue for a few years now.

Re the text books – I think it was mostly a controversy manufactured from outside. For example, no one reports when one of Japan’s text books is rejected because it *leaves out facts *regarding Japan’s conduct during WWII. Second, **cckerberos **beat me to it in posting the link to the text books. And the Fusosha book was the one that sparked riots overseas back in 2004-2005. What is not reported is that less than 20 junior high schools in Japan, out of over 11,000 junior high schools, adopted the textbook.

I’ve taken history classes in Japan, at both the high school and university level. I also obviously went to high school in the US. In both Japan and the US, textbooks are only a starting point. I recall in 11th grade in the US when the text book whizzed through Korea and Vietnam pretty quick – not really America’s finest hour - but the teacher still spent several weeks talking about it in class, including My Lai, which I don’t recall as being discussed that much in the textbook I was using.

This linktalks about how history is addressed in US schools, and it pretty much summarizes my experience with history classes in junior and senior high shool in the US:

Two omissions loom even larger. First, coverage is often sanitized. The poet Walt Whitman wrote of the Civil War, “The real war will never get into the books.” Certainly, the true nature of war does not get into most high school textbooks. James W. Loewen’s analysis, in Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995), of the photographs used to illustrate the Vietnam War, demonstrates this clearly: rather than the famous photographs of the My Lai Massacre or the napalmed girl running naked toward the camera, many publishers choose nondescript images of soldiers walking through rice paddies in Southeast Asia.

Second, authors and publishers often avoid moral and strategic issues. On 8 December 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States in the Pacific War abandoned all international rules governing submarine warfare and began attacking Japanese shipping—military or commercial—without warning. This policy is defensible, but the defense might make awkward discussions in U.S. textbooks of Berlin’s unrestricted submarine warfare as one of the reasons the United States entered World War I against Germany.

Similarly, America’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II remain controversial. Because high school texts often avoid controversy, a typical account of the ending of World War II maintains that “Japan rejected [the call] for its unconditional surrender” on 29 July; “the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima” and “two days later” (actually three) “dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki”; “on August 10 the Japanese government asked for peace”; and “on August 14, 1945, President Truman announced by radio that Japan had accepted the Allied peace terms.” The clear implication is that the bombs alone forced Japan to accept unconditional surrender (from Todd and Curti, Triumph of the American Nation, 1986).

There are issues here of both fact and morality. What role did the announcement of Soviet entry in the war against Japan have in precipitating surrender? Given that Gen. Douglas MacArthur acceded to Japan’s condition that Emperor Hirohito remain on the throne, is the surrender best understood as unconditional? Did the United States drop the Hiroshima bomb partly to in fluence the Soviet Union in the postwar period? Was it correct to drop either the first or second bomb? The American Pageant summarizes the bomb as “a fantastic ace up [America’s] sleeve.” Having witnessed the Smithsonian Institution’s reversal on its Enola Gay display, most textbook publishers are unlikely to explore this controversy further.

Japan has lots of problems. Not being ‘sorry enough’ for the war isn’t one of them.

[Gary_Baldy]

@xtisme

Gary Baldy, the Russian troops were already at their jump off points BEFORE the bombs fell…that’s how they were able to attack on August 9th. Again, you simply can’t start an attack on a dime, it takes days or even weeks of planning and staging, of getting the logistics in order…a million little things have to come together. The Russians declared war on Japan exactly when they agreed to do so…and their attack pretty much proves they were poised to do so, regardless of the bombs.

It wasn’t in Stalin’s best interest to wait, and this is a man who really couldn’t give two shits about how many causalities the Soviet army took, as long as they did what he wanted them to do. He didn’t bat an eye ordering them into the meat grinder that was Germany, after all.

I already stated that I gave the wrong impression when I said Stalin wasn’t going to declare war at all on Japan. I believe that he would have delayed attacking Japan if the atomic bomb had not been used.

Of course, I know an attacked couldn’t happen out of thin air and it had to be prepared. Stalin had shifted the Red Army stationed on the east to help repel the Nazis in the west. So I understand the logistic, etc.

As I said, I believe he would have delayed. So I’ll concede that on this point I put more opinion than I should have. However, I think it’s still quite logical to argue both ways on whether Stalin would have delayed his attack or not had events not involved the atomic bomb; just as it can be argued both ways on whether Stalin was planning to attack Germany or not.

As far as meatgrinding goes, I agree. In fact, I was going to point to Stalingrad as an example of what Japanese would have tried to replicate had a land invasion of Japan had proceeded.

[Magiver]

I wanted to post this earlier but forgot. The idea that Russia had to wait to attack Japan doesn’t make sense. They were able to move a tank factory in the wake of advancing Germans. At the end of the Atlantic war it was only a matter of moving assets from one side of their own country to the other. This is something they could have done logistically in a matter of days.

IMO, their entry into the war was at their discretion and not based on logistics.

[Dissonance]

@Magiver

I wanted to post this earlier but forgot. The idea that Russia had to wait to attack Japan doesn’t make sense. They were able to move a tank factory in the wake of advancing Germans. At the end of the Atlantic war it was only a matter of moving assets from one side of their own country to the other. This is something they could have done logistically in a matter of days.

Except the relocation of factories to the Urals wasn’t accomplished in days, and once relocated they weren’t immediately up and running at capacity. The Supreme Evacuation Council that oversaw it was set up on June 24 1941, 2 days after the German invasion. The evacuation of industries began in July '41 and continued until November, there’s somewhat of a breakdown of what was evacuated and when here. While the German advance was swift, distances in Russia are vast. For instance, it took until September to reach Leningrad and Kiev, giving the Soviets 2 months to relocate factories from them. Could the USSR have declared war on Japan within a couple of days of the Surrender of Germany? Sure. Would they be attacking Manchuria with 1.5 million soldiers or something close to it? Certainly not. Moving 1.5 million men, 28,000 artillery pieces, 5,500 tanks along with their thin-skinned vehicles and then building up the thousands of tons of food, fuel, and ammunition they need in forward depots in Manchuria wasn’t something that could be accomplished in days.

[Bryan_Ekers]

I happily admit, I feel myself educated by this - up to now, I’d kinda assumed (and western history books were all too happy to assist) that the Soviet declaration of war with Japan was an opportunistic and largely symbolic gesture after the Americans had dropped their nuke. Now I see the timing was largely coincidental. I wonder if there were Soviet soldiers on the new far-east front who were also grateful for the A-Bomb, since they were about to be tossed into battle with the fierce remnants of Japan and get their own taste of Okinawa-style defenses. Even a veteran of the war with Germany can’t have have been sanguine about that.

[XT]

@Magiver

IMO, their entry into the war was at their discretion and not based on logistics.

I think Dissonance gave a great answer to this, but just to emphasize, EVERYTHING in warfare is based on logistics. Especially in modern warfare. The Soviets absolutely could not have attacked into Manchuria without a hell of a lot of advanced planning, staging of troops, and pre-positioning of supplies and materials, and plans and means to move those materials along with the advancing forces.

As an example, a T-34 could go approximately 200-300 miles (give or take, depending on if you used external fuel tanks and such) with on board fuel. Say 120-150 gallons…times something like 5000 tanks. Initially. We are talking about 3 separate Armies here (BIG armies), after all. Now…draw a circle around where the those the Soviets far eastern bases where the tanks were and that’s as far as they would go (less actually, but just as an example). They wouldn’t have even reached where the Japanese were with on board fuel. If you wanted them to go further you’d need…lots more fuel. And trucks to carry the fuel. And spare parts (tanks break down, even Soviet tanks). And then there is ammo. Well, and folks have to eat, so food…medicine…etc…etc. And plans on how to keep those supplies flowing so that your advancing forces don’t suddenly stop advancing and just sit there. In short…logistics. Simple as that.

@Bryan Ekers

Even a veteran of the war with Germany can’t have have been sanguine about that.

It’s an interesting question. On the one hand, Russians have always been a bit casual about things like heavy combat loses. Look at the horrific loses they took in the first few years of the war, when whole armies were wiped out (or at Kursk, where they ‘won’ by losing over half their army and about 2-3 times more troops and tanks than the Germans did). On the other hand, I don’t think they had the same burning desire to see Japan go down as they did the Germans…they were seriously pissed off at the Germans, while I doubt they gave much thought to the Japanese one way or the other, especially after they figured out Japan didn’t want to tangle with them either in the far east.

My WAG is that the average Soviet soldier wouldn’t have been too keen to give up his life for Stalin and the mother land in an invasion of Japan…but they would have done what was asked of them and died in droves on the beaches just like the rest of the allies. Gods know how they would have reacted once the beach heads were established and they (and us) started moving inland…it would have been pretty grim though. Anyone who thinks that the atomic bombs dropped were worse than what an invasion would have been have never really looked at the Soviet advance into Germany culminating in the taking of Berlin, or projected the difference between the German people and the Japanese, illustrated by what happened on Okinawa.

-XT