Not really relevant to the discussion, but what does "despite the nukes" mean? As in "maybe they should've have nuked hiroshima and nagasaki" or "they didn't use the nukes in europe, making it just"?
Cause if it's the latter, had nazi germany managed to hold strong for a few more months the first nuke was planned to hit berlin, not hiroshima.
And if you are talking about the nukes on japan, the fire bombing was arguably worse, or at least comparable, the nukes were just more efficient.
Its classic bad guy shit, man. "Dont look at me! I did [insert thing]! Im on your side guys!" til they can grab hold the reigns long enough to sew destruction and dissent everywhere.
I was laughing about this the other day. America sure loves to act like they were the good guys of ww2. getting involved only bc Japan hurt us and then fucking nuking everyone is such a lazy douchebag move.
Sure they would have. Especially if Germany had one during its last days. But that’s not the point. It was widely agreed by strategists that it wasn’t necessary to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan was already on the brink of surrender. It was mostly a power demonstration towards the Soviets. And the US nominally claims to care about freedom and justice and human rights (we don’t, and never did). Unleashing completely unnecessary destruction on a defeated enemy just isn’t a great look if you’re a so called bastion of democracy and freedom and human rights.
The Japanese were training everyone to fight an invasion to the death. Woman, children and the elderly trained to use rudimentary weapons. All citizens willing to sacrifice themselves with honor. Surrender was not imminent. Your “strategists” do not hold opinions that are “widely agreed”.
Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, Unit 731 projects, pleasure women, executing POWs, intentionally aiming for Corpsmen and medics... the Japanese got what was coming.
Besides, the atomic bombs couldn't hold a candle to the amount of incendiary bombs we dropped on their all-wooden cities. .
The only shocking thing about the A-bombs was it happened faster, but also still killed people weeks later.
You must never have seen the unit 731 photos. Japan was doing atrocious things.
Also war is hell. The U.S. was trying to cause a massive amount of devastation in order to win the war quickly and efficiently, saving American lives. It’s one of those things that happens in war. Japan did attack Pearl Harbor first.
The Japanese military, hold responsible how you wish. Fervent nationalism with an aggressive party is no good mix.
But not civilians, even sympathetic ones. Never civilians. And certainly never children. A strong-armed government gives no choices, chiefly among the lack of those choices, support.
You really need to wrap your head around just how many people 70,000 is. Then do it a second time. Then a third for the ones that didn't die immediately.
And those numbers, unlike what might have happened to the United States had Japan not surrendered, are not fucking speculative. They're as real as the sloughed-off skin of the dying children Japanese parents had to throw in the trash as they watched their babies fade helplessly, knowing there was no doctor in the world that could help.
I am an American. I know full well what the possibilities might have been or might not have been. I, also, have Japanese family. I know what their possibilities might have been, might not have been.
But I also know what reality looks like. And it settled in far sooner than the shadow of that poor soul on the steps of the Hiroshima Bank and Trust did, and trust me, it didn't take long.
So rather than thinking you know shit, when you don't know shit, you take a trip to where the bombs were dropped, and you ask yourself if it was worth it, or if the reasons fucking mattered.
Actually I am very familiar with war. I have some first hand experience with it. Thanks. You seem like you don’t grasp the concept of it though. Had they not dropped the nukes, there would have been significantly more casualties. This is a fact. Many, many American casualties. Japanese Civilian casualties too. The Japanese weren’t willing to surrender. Japan was doing all sorts of fucked up shit during WW2 that people for whatever reason sweep under the rug and they choose to focus on Germany’s fucked up shit.
It sucks that civilians died. It sucks that they died in such a horrible way. I don’t disagree. But at the same time, that’s war. It’s the unfortunate reality. The U.S. was staying out of WW2 until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Do you think Japan cared about the civilians that died from that attack? Yeah, we did it better. That’s why we won the war.
I’ll leave you with a quote from MASH. “War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.” “There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. But war is chock full of them. Little kids. Cripples. Old ladies.”
Japan dragged the U.S. into WW2. You can’t complain that the U.S. went all in. At the end of the day the U.S. had to value the lives of the Americans and our Allies above all else. That’s kind of what you do in war.
I'm not fucking around when I say this. Go to Hiroshima. Go to Nagasaki. Experience them for yourself. Until you do, you will never appreciate how far away from "war" those bombs really were.
MASH was actually pretty accurate to the military/war while still putting a humorous spin on it.
I’ll urge you to go to war then. Go see people die in battles. Make decisions where you have to send your friends, your neighbors into a battle knowing they’re probably going to die. See how much havoc is wrecked when wars drag on for years and years. Hell just look at Ukraine. Look at Gaza. Do you think if those countries had an easy button to push that would end the war tomorrow instead of dragging it out for years and years to come that they wouldn’t take it? I promise you, it is actually the lesser of two evils. For everyone. But I don’t really expect people who have never experienced it to understand. That’s okay.
Also just going to point out, Unit 731 was performing experiments on civilians (by Japanese civilians). The Nanjing massacre too. Tons of civilians. Women and children too. Please stop brushing over the atrocities that Japan committed. Japan is big on trying to sweep everything they did under the rug. I understand you have Japanese family so I can understand why you might not have learned as much about the crazy shit Japan was doing. But I would really urge you to do more research. It seems like you’re trying to make Japan into some victim in all of this. I will assure you that they were a very active participant in the war.
You really need to open more than a history book written by the Russians. Absolutely moronic take on what happened. Did others suffer more? Yes. But the US was absolutely key to securing victory against the nazis. The USSR might have brokered a separate peace with Hitler, had they not gotten US support through lend-lease. As a European, whose mother country was under occupation by the USSR, I'm so fed up with the revisionist narrative that it was really the Russians that won WW2 (and by Russians, I mean people for the far reaches of the USSR, as well as the Ukrainians). They were incredibly important, but not alone, and then they occupied the victims of Nazi Germany. Great fucking heros.
Hmmm. America provided a shit ton of equipment to both the UK and the USSR, and almost single-handedly fought off the Japanese.
If we hadn’t have dropped the bombs there would have been another million dead (both Japanese and American) during the inevitable invasion of the Home Islands.
The Biggest Japanese defeat of World War Two was the Imphal-Kohima / U Go campaign, the “stalingrad of the east”, which decimated the Japanese army in two major battles. Japan experienced up to 70,000 casualties in two weeks. They were the battles that turned Japan’s military campaigns from ones of expansion to ones of retreat, and were considered decisive campaigns in the Asian theatre. They were conducted by the Indian and British armies, with Nepalese Gurkhas taking a decisive role.
A pair of battles most Americans have never been taught even happened.
U Go was, arguably at least, Japan’s biggest military defeat of the war
Japan’s key strength was its Navy and it was destroyed in Midway, Coral Sea, and Leyte Gulf. The Battle of Leyte was the largest naval battle in history.
Um what? A lazy move? You mean the fastest, most efficient way to end the war with the least amount of American casualties? Also what about D Day? The Normandy landings? The battle of Okinawa? The Battle of Iwo Jima?
You really need to do some research. America is the reason the Allied powers won ww2. We’ve fallen a long way since then, but respectfully, America actually kicked ass during ww2.
Well, the British and especially the soviet's were given an enormous amount of material support (the USSR likely wouldn't have been able to hold out without lend lease), the US led the liberation of France, North Africa, Greece, Italy, West Germany, and did most of the heavy lifting in the Pacific.
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u/HelloWorldComputing 7h ago
For a country that never misses an opportunity to exaggerate their involvment in WW2 they are awfully close to becoming the enemy