this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Now imagine how the japanese are seen by the people of China, Korea, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra, Singapore, Indonesia and Papua who were still living under japanese occupation and terror in August 1945. Who died in droves far greater than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki victims, with up to 25 million casualities. Whose death rates increased towards the end of the war, and for whom a delay of the capitulation of the japanese by a few weeks or, god forbid, months would have meant millions of deaths.
Who, mind you, did not support the japanese government, did not support the japanese war, had no way of stopping it except for fighting for their lives, yet still had to suffer from it. Unlike the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who could have prevented the japanese government from taking power, who could have striked and fought against their militaristic government, who could have sabotaged the war efforts of their government in a war that was lost anyways - yet they never did.
Like, there are still people alive today who wouldn't have been without the atomic bombs. And I'm not even talking about american soldiers here, I'm talking about civilians. Not dropping those bombs would have meant their death. Go on, tell them they should've died because the japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were innocently living their life and it totally wasn't their government, their labor and their devotion to the emperor that kept the war going.
After all, the real victims of the japanese imperial war were the japanese. Totally! You know, those who until today have not accepted their crimes and instead openly deny it.
At the same time you can turn that around and say that there are thousands of regular people (that didn't have any power over what their country was doing and didn't participate in it) who would be alive today and that aren't because of two bombs... So it's not that strong of an argument when you think about it...
It's funny how the people in the war fighting countries don't have "any power" over what their country is doing. Nope. None at all. Nope. Can't oppose your government, can't fight your government, can't oppose the war, can't strike, can't sabotage, can't leave. Nope, nothing they can do. Poor, poor victims of war.
And that the people who actually lived innocently have to die in 10-fold numbers because those poor Japanese can't be held accountable.
Lots of people protested OEF and OIF and the US famously stopped the invasion because it's citizens asked them to.
And the italians revolted against their facist handlers. And hung Mussolini upside down in Milano. That's why italy got a rather okay end to the second world war.
And the poles managed to stage an uprising against the germans while fully under their control in a ghetto. But yeah, the poor japanese victims were powerless.
You're saying with the point of view of someone in 2023. The Army would have shot people fighting against their government and that would have been the end of it. Japan (especially at the time) is also culturally very different from Western countries.
Yeah that excuses the 25 Million dead people and damn the US for stopping them. They just wanted to murder in peace!
But hey, thanks for confirming that only the nuclear bombs could have pushed them into surrendering. After all, anything else was culturally too different for them.
I never said it's not dramatic, I said that your argument that "people are alive today because X" doesn't hold much water because others died so they're alive. Go tell the family of those who died that their brother/sister/parent had to die to save people in another country.
I'm german and an anti fascist. The fuck do you think I'd do?
Tell me, what two days during WW2 did the Germans lose over 100k civilians uninvolved in the war in a couple of seconds? 🤔
The situations aren't that comparable if we're being honest with ourselves.
The entire concept of "total war" is that civilians are involved. And you know, it was the japanese and germans who wanted to wage war that way.
Man you are right. Dying so quickly was way too humane, the americans were really too ethical. And the bomb survivors even got medical treatment! The Americans should have slowly, over years, killed and maimed and raped their way through Japan, like the japanese did in their occupied territories. And watch as all those civillians in the japanese occupied territories are treated the exact same way. You are absolutely right man. That would've been the right thing.
So you take responsibility for all decisions taken by your government then?
I'll just ignore the ridiculous bit after that.
That's part of the social contract, man. It doesn't mean that every time your government kills someone, you're guilty of murder, but it does mean that we all bear some culpability for the actions of governments we live under, barring an actual attempt to break allegiance with that government.
So would you tell the people who were in the Japanese anti war movement that they should have done more or is there a point where you accept that sometimes the system is just too big for citizens to stop it?
It's easy to act like a hero behind a keyboard, when confronted to the prospect of having to choose between our life and the life of a stranger in another country, the vast, vast majority will sacrifice the stranger and if I had to bet on it I would bet you would do the same because the odds would be in my favor. Heck, it's a choice we make every day by purchasing crap made in third world country instead of spending more on stuff made locally, including whatever device you're typing on.
And that necessitates that I take some responsibility for those choices, including the ire of those wronged by the actions of my society. And the greater the wrong, the greater the retribution one must expect.
"An eye for an eye"
Bull fucking shit
By that logic, how do you want to go about choosing the Americans that need to be killed to compensate the death of the citizens of Irak and Afghanistan? 🤔