Earlier this year as the 70th anniversary of VE day approached, major news outlets discussed the upcoming festivities and showed interviews with veterans and speeches from politicians about the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation. We were reminded of the evils of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. All of this is, of course, true.
As the 70th anniversary of VJ day approaches – especially today as this marks 70 years since the bombing of Hiroshima – nearly every media outlet seems focused on hand-wringing over the use of atomic weapons against Japan. While I noted one interesting article from the LA Times about the Japanese nuclear program, everything else has almost completely omitted any mention of the evils Imperial Japan perpetrated on its side of the world during the war. It’s as if the Japanese have gotten a pass on a lot of the stuff they did because we condensed the killing of many of their civilians into two bombs.
We killed a ton of German civilians from the air too – depending on who you ask, between 350 and 650 thousand, between the RAF and the Army Air Corps. There is essentially no handwringing over this in the modern media. It isn’t even mentioned. Mention Dresden to the average person, they won’t know what you’re talking about. Hiroshima? Most likely. But no one cares about bombing German civilians because the Nazis were really bad, right?
In terms of evil, I think the Germans and the Japanese were about neck and neck. We just don’t hear about what the Japanese did to the Chinese (or the Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or…) nearly as often as we hear about what the Germans did to the populations of Europe. And so we have the term “Nazi” to neatly package all that evil and, in modern times, describe a bad person or someone who is mean to you. But we don’t have a companion term for Imperial Japan. Call someone an “Imperial” and they’ll just look at you funny or tell you they are disturbed by your lack of faith.
The morality and/or necessity of using nuclear weapons against Japan had been discussed in full twenty years before I was born, and so I will not delve into that – but I will say this. Between an almost overwhelming and constant reminder of the evils of Nazi Germany during World War II and a near-total lack of knowledge of what Imperial Japan did during the war, it’s not totally surprising that most people are more concerned about apologizing for American actions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki than efficiently ending a reign of terror that lasted for almost fifteen years, spanned a continent, and cost millions of lives.
A good article Andrew. I agree with your points.
The best book on the subject that I have read is called Downfall, by Richard B Frank. In that book I believe he estimates the civilian casualties in Japanese-occupied territory at roughly 100,000 per month. So much for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
There is a reason why we are constantly reminded why the Nazis were so evil, and it isn’t because they were anymore evil than many governments in place today. I shouldn’t have to explain it.
I guess you do have to explain it to me.
Is it because the Germans killed white people and the Japanese killed yellow people?
Is it the same reason you see people wearing t-shirts with Che Guevara’s image, while you don’t see people wearing t-shirts with Heinrich Himmler’s image?
As for me, I don’t feel bad at all about the US popping nukes over two Japanese cities, for three main reasons:
First, I refuse to feel bad over something in which I had no role. I’ll agonize for decades over some minor thing I may have done that wronged someone; I won’t waste a second worrying about something some stranger did to someone else.
Second, in this case, the US did not treat Japan wrongly. “Start stupid wars, win stupid prizes.” Or, if you prefer, “don’t start none, won’t be none.”
Finally, those who, especially these days, second-guess the decision to use nukes against Japanese cities have the benefit of hindsight. In 2015, it’s easy to say that a few more months of unrestricted submarine warfare and conventional bombing of Japanese cities might have resulted in a Japanese surrender (at a terrible cost to Japanese lives), even without an invasion. In 1945, President Truman and his advisers had no easy way to gauge the effectiveness of these operations on Japan’s continued ability to resist.
Another point to consider is that by ending the war in the pacific before the USSR could get involved, the US prevented Japan from being split in twain much like Germany was in the post war.
Not to gloss over the horrific aftermath of using nuclear weapons, the repeated firebombings inflicted significant civilian casualties as well.
Also, another point to make is, unlike the Germans, the Japanese still haven’t fully accepted responsibility to the wide multitude of crimes they committed, to the ire of multiple East Asian countries like China and South Korea, especially with their more nationalist administration nowadays. From what I know, all that history is still censored at least in education, not discussed much and whitewashed with euphemisms. We debate about the revising of history in the US but at least one can still learn of things like Wounded Knee or the US sponsorship of dictators with more ease. Even though they did not have a systematic program of genocide the intensity and scale of what they did is certainly at least equal to what the Germans did.
Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atom Bomb” says it better then pretty much anyone else:
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf
I agree with this article, I am from Malaysia, and do hear stories of Japanese brutality against civilian from my grandparents, they live through WW2. And now Japanese government are rewritting the history books saying that they were the good guys and have not committed such brutality, makes you wish USA should have drop a few more atomic bombs on them to remind them of their place.
Truman had been told by Stalin at Potsdam that he would wait 90 days to enter the war with Japan. He kept his word and began overrunning China, Korea, and other parts of southeast Asia at the exact same time the atomic bombs were dropped. Even after Japan’s capitulation, Stalin’s forces continued to fight for an additional week so they could secure their territorial gains. This wasn’t just about Japan. The bombs not only saved Japan, but kept them from being completely surrounded by the Soviets for the next 40 years.
I don’t I think there’s difference between feeling bad about something and regretting it. It was the terrible but necessary end of a terrible but necessary war. I also prefer a Cold War to a hot one.
I mean it’s entirely possible I wouldn’t be here if we had invaded the Japanese homeland. (Both my grandfathers were in the Army, which I assume would have been called in for a mainland invasion.) So here I am, but a lot people aren’t. Do I regret that? No, that would be absurd. But I.m not exactly overjoyed,either.
Anyway, glad to see you posting again, You still going to be posting over at TFB? You and Nathaniel were doing great things, I thought.
Correction:
^I DO I think there’s difference between feeling bad about something and regretting it.
I think we should all take a step back from nationalism in this discussion and just consider the global media emphasizing deaths from a nuclear strike as a good thing. Nuclear weapons and war should always be considered with horror because the cost of people losing their fear of them is really hard to think of. Consider also the current Japanese government is certainly not popular with the Japanese people for a lot of reasons, nuclear policy being one of them, and the current generation of Japanese has nothing to do with the atrocities committed in WWII. This habit of placing guilt on a group of people over generations that had nothing to do with the original act is the same thinking in the Middle East and in race relations ad nauseum.
Nagano, Japan
If you just want to know the numbers. This video verified or not is useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWUaDMuMATM
I disagree with this article and most of the comment on it as well.
Your main points seem to be:
1. The Japanese did terrible things
2. We also did terrible things to the Germans
On your first point I think we both agree that the Japanese committed terrible atrocities leading up to and during WW2. I don’t however think that there is validity in the justification that they did terrible things so it’s ok to do terrible things to them. If you readily match your enemy in how low they will sink then you are no better than them. I do believe we were fighing a just war against the axis powers, but that does not grant carte blanche to use any tactic.
I also agree on the factual basis of your second point, yes we did do other terrible things to the Germans and the Japanese. The firebombing campaigns of WW2 were very bad as well, but that doesn’t excuse the atomic bombings.
The use of nuclear weapons, at least in these 2 instances is distinct from what we would consider regular warfare. Firstly it is sure to product huge civilian casualties. I would argue that this was the point of bombing 2 large population centers in the first place. Second, the use the bombs fits many definitions of terrorism. It was a mass killing of civilians intended to induce fear and produce a response. You could argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were primarily military targets and the civilian casualties were not relevant, but still the vast majority of deaths were civilians. There were many military deaths in the Pentagon on 9/11, it’s only functions are military and defense related, yet we still generally consider that specific attack an instance of terrorism.
Many war crimes we would never argue as to their validity, no matter the situation. Rape as a weapon of war being a particularly disgusting one. Many people would argue that torture is not justified in any case. I would say that the intentional targeting of civilian population centers is never justified. If you believe that it is justified then I would ask you how you would feel if it were our population centers that were targeted. If the Taliban had somehow miraculously killed 100,000 mostly civilians in some US city, would we accept that that was a valid military action? No, never.
All parties in the war did terrible things, many of them war crimes by today’s standards. It’s a problem when any nation starts to believe that the terrible things they did were actually ok.
I understand where you are coming from and respect your viewpoint.
My problem is that everyone wants to feel bad for the Japanese but no one cares what we did to the Germans. No one even knows. Atrocities committed by the Allies against the Germans are given a free pass, because the Germans did a lot of very bad things, and those very bad things have been publicized greatly. But atrocities committed by the Allies against the Japanese are held to a higher standard simply because we were more efficient in committing them? How does that make sense? This is not a specific response to what you wrote, which was eloquent and well thought out – just an attempt to re-summarize or re-state my article.
Thank you for replying to my comment. I only saw the post today and I had hoped it was not too old to comment on and have anybody see it.
It is unfortunate how the two big headline grabbing events in the war, the holocaust and the atomic bombings, often overshadow all the other things, at least as far as general public knowledge of history goes. It certainly distorts perceptions when things like Dresden, Unit 731, “comfort women”, Japanese internment, the firebombing of Tokyo, etc… are left out.
When I was in school our WW2 history was primarily about the holocaust, with the atomic bombings being just a little bookend on the whole story. I don’t remember anything about Japanese war crimes, or the civilian casualties the allies inflicted in both theaters. I don’t remember any questioning of the atomic bombings in my specific classes. As I remember it was just presented to us as if America had no choice.
Of all the atrocities committed during the war, I think it’s important to remember and judge them as evenhandedly we can as human beings.
Dropping 2 nuclear bombs on Japan saved more lives, including, Japanese lives, than any other decision made in the course of WWII.
Remember that the 2 bombs were not dropped at the same time, nor were they dropped for no reason. The Japs did not surrender after the first one. The Japanese stated, and demonstrated that they weren’t bluffing, that they would fight to the last man.
Their outright evil acts were distinctly different from things the Allies (with the notable exception of the USSR – see the Red Army’s rapes of women in Germany, Hungary, Poland and every country they passed through).
The Allies never engaged in sanctioned and encouraged mass rapes, bayoneting of babies, and medical experiments that would make Josef Mengele sick to his stomach (see Unit 731).
The Japs were worse than the Nazis, if that’s even possible.
Not nuking them would have been a death sentence for millions of American soldiers, Japanese ones and Japanese civilians.
It’s the classic ends-justifies-the-means argument. Is it ok to commit an atrocity and/or a war crime if you think it will save lives in the long run?
I don’t think so, and I don’t think we nor any other nation should operate that way. We have moral and ethical boundaries that we should just not cross in war. If we abide by those boundaries only until we see a benefit in crossing them, then they weren’t really boundaries at all were they?
The problem is that in wartime everybody thinks they are doing the right thing and that their cause is just. Everybody can rationalize doing something they know is clearly wrong by convincing themselves that it’s the right choice. After all isn’t that how evil happens? The Nazis, the Japanese, the things they did that were so horrific, it wasn’t just a group of people who were born evil, they were convinced that the terrible things they were doing were actually ok because it would be better in the long run.
We should not and cannot excuse the atrocities committed by the Germans and the Japanese were they to try to reason “I thought the good would outweigh the bad” or “I thought the ends justified the means” or even if they said “I thought it would save lives in the long run”. Nor should we, in my opinion, excuse the deliberate targeting of civilian population centers by the allies in Germany and Japan.
In the modern day we would never accept that killing a large number of civilians as a way to end a war quicker is morally justified, it’s a war crime. I hope that we have moved beyond that. But if we have moved beyond that we can’t simultaneously continue to view the past atomic bombings as justified.
As a side note the word “Jap” is a racial slur, at least in America were there are more negative connotations with it due to the internment during the war.
Bless your heart.
-A Chinese
Actually, I believe the correct analogue for “Nazi” to be applied to the case of Imperial Japanese activities/atrocities would be “Tojo,” using the slang of the period. Of course nowadays, nobody would have a clue what you were on about, but at the time, there would have been no confusion whatsoever.