fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3181 ]

[ SECRET POST #3181 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3181 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 070 secrets from Secret Submission Post #455.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Yeah…um…considering doesn't really matter, though.

Throughout WWI, ALL of the powers "considered" ending the war at various points. They didn't until 1918. Instead, they just sent millions more innocents to die.

So "considering" counts for jack shit.

Harry Truman purposely killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to make a political statement.

The US detonated the world’s first weapon of mass destruction simply to send a message to the Soviet Union and stop Red expansion into Asia.

Oh, and I’ll leave on this little note from President Truman’s youth. Again, I’m not saying he’s racist or anything, but…

In Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb, Japanese American historian Ronald Takaki writes about the man who made the final decision to destroy two Japanese cities, President Harry Truman. This was the same man who, when he was younger, wrote the following in a letter to his future wife, Bess:

"I think one man is as good as another, so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. My uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America."

Yikes.

Watch yt Americans ignore that letter :)

I'm not ignoring it, but context matters.

Is funny to me that the Japanese of the time would be less offended by the pro-white racism, and more offended that this white guy who they would see as clearly ignorant, dared to lump them in with the Chinese.

The Japanese were racist again the Chinese and vice versa and nobody denies that. This racism explains atrocities like the Rape of Nanking.

But I keep seeing that the dropping of the bomb "has nothing to do with race!". Why on earth is the racism of the person who ordered to drop the bomb on people he considered /subhuman/ not up to examination?

Because…the Japanese were never under threat of extermination?

Like…the US occupied Japan but it's not like a genocidal rampage occurred.

You could more easily make this argument about Stalin and Eastern Europe.

Yeah, the US was racist. Yeah, the US bombed the shit out of Japan.

Germany also had the shit bombed out of it.

Plus, Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. The atomic bomb's first detonation test was JULY 16th of that year -- 1945. So of course it wasn't going to be used on Germany -- Germany had already surrendered.

According to this document:

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/R03-T06-F23-Military-Policy-Committee-Minutes-of-Meetings.pdf

The original target was the Japanese FLEET because if the bomb failed to go off, it would go into the ocean, making it more difficult to salvage. Also, Japan didn't have the same nuclear program that the Nazis did, making the risk of secrets being uncovered much, much smaller.

These seem, by every measure, to be PRACTICAL concerns.

Truman was racist. Duh.

Were the Japanese less racist? Ask the Chinese.

I hate this strawman omg

THE JAPANESE WERE RACIST AGAINST THE CHINESE
NO DENIAL BY ABSOLUTELY ANYONE
EVERYONE KNOWS BECAUSE ITS TAUGHT
IT EXPLAINS THEIR WAR CRIMES

TRUMAN WAS RACIST
BUT NO ONE EVEN KNOWS IT BECAUSE IT IS NOT TAUGHT
NOR DISCUSSES IT
NOR CONSIDERS IT MIGHT HAD AFFECTED THE BOMBS' USAGE

NO THEY KEEP SAYING RACE PLAYED NO PART ON IT

Er…EVERYONE knows Truman was racist.

Like, everyone I know basically assumes that people from the 1940s (ANYTHING pre-1960s especially) was racist as fuck.

DUH

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tabaqui - 2015-09-19 22:04 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 22:08 (UTC) - Expand

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tabaqui - 2015-09-19 22:46 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 22:52 (UTC) - Expand

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tabaqui - 2015-09-19 23:03 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 23:23 (UTC) - Expand

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tabaqui - 2015-09-19 23:43 (UTC) - Expand

"Harry Truman purposely killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to make a political statement." -- War is inherently political. Do you not understand that the USA was at war with Japan. In a conflict INSTIGATED BY Japan.

The USA had been extensively bombing Japanese cities throughout the entirety of the war. The casualties were highest not in Hiroshima, not in Nagasaki, but in Tokyo, which was bombed with conventional weaponry.

The fact that Truman was racist doesn't mean much here. The Japanese were also pretty fucking racist. Have you seen the way they treated the Chinese? Whatever we did to the Japanese (and it was horrific, no doubt) the Japanese certainly matched in things like Unit 731.

Isn't Truman the one who also went on to integrate the military?

Yeah, no, sorry. They considered, they *tried*, they were *working* on it. We knew it. We decided to kill them, anyway.

ELEMENTS of the Japanese government did so.

But there was no consensus at the time.

Throughout long conflicts, governments will often think about suing for peace or surrendering. But that hardly means that if the conflict continues because an agreement couldn't be reached that it's somehow "wrong' to continue fighting.

Germany certainly tried to sue for peace with the Allies during WWI but the talks fell apart because no one was getting what they wanted. That hardly meant that Germany was beaten or that the Allies "decided to kill them anyway" -- Germany certainly decided to keep on fighting the war and there were still MASSIVE casualties afterward.

(da)
I think the considering and knowing part is less relevant than the fact not one, but two bombs were dropped while knowing most victims would be civilians.

It baffles me how many people are forgetting that these people were just families living their lives and not soldiers.

And that doing it TWICE was okay because "American lives!"

The guy who who was displaying Enola Gay at the museum was almost CRYING at how many American lives this plane saved.

Because we were at war.

German cities were bombed by the Allies.

America had been conducting extensive firebombing against Japan.

The Japanese DESTROYED Chinese cities and tortured/murdered civilians with nary a care.

So of course civilians died and of course people were proud of saving the lives of their countrymen.

What is so difficult to understand about this?

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(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 21:57 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 23:02 (UTC) - Expand

what a romantic view of murder, to bring him to tears like that :')

Exactly. Bombing military targets, military *units* - that's horrifying but part of war, everyone did it. *Deliberately* bombing civilians - beyond grotesque. And yes, 'everyone' did that, too, but we're the only ones that used nuclear weapons to do it.

Pretty much this.

All parties in a war commit horrifying acts and some of them aren't really justifiable, not matter how many people try to keep their country as the one in the high moral ground.

Word. But this anon doesn't really understand the gravity of nuclear weapons. Every time this topic comes around Capslock McGee comes by with the same spiel.

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tabaqui - 2015-09-19 23:08 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-09-20 13:01 (UTC) - Expand

This isn't really related, but have you heard of Unit 731?

You know, I bet if we were working on surrendering on a nation and they bombed us anyway, we wouldn't be so quick to say "Well shucks, were only TRYING, so they had a good excuse to kill us..."

Fact is they DIDN'T surrender when they had the chance.

They didn't like the terms. The USA wanted an unconditional surrender. Japan didn't want to so they were working on trying to get different terms.

That's nice and all, but that hardly means they would have surrendered without the bombings. Because it's not like they couldn't have before.

By "they" you mean a handful of officials who held no military power.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia page would show you that this sentiment was not shared:

"On August 7, a day after Hiroshima was destroyed, Dr. Yoshio Nishina and other atomic physicists arrived at the city, and carefully examined the damage. They then went back to Tokyo and told the cabinet that Hiroshima was indeed destroyed by an atomic bomb. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, estimated that no more than one or two additional bombs could be readied, so they decided to endure the remaining attacks, acknowledging "there would be more destruction but the war would go on." American Magic codebreakers intercepted the cabinet's messages."

"The senior leadership of the Japanese Army began preparations to impose martial law on the nation, with the support of Minister of War Korechika Anami, in order to stop anyone attempting to make peace."

Honestly, if you aren't even aware of the disparate factions within the Japanese government during WWII, you aren't really knowledgeable enough to speak as authoritatively about the subject as you seem to be trying to do. There were several, and the one you are referencing was not the one in power. American leadership was aware of this, even if you are not.

I'm not trying to be unduly harsh, but you have considerable emotion invested on a topic you've clearly never studied well. Might I suggest you do?

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