I know this going to piss people off, but here it goes:
Anyone care to tell me why I can’t seem to recall learning a whole lot about this in my middle school textbook?
NOTE: No, I’m not saying the Japanese shouldn’t be honest about their history. Of course they do. Unfortunately, however, it would seem the Japanese aren’t the only ones with hazy memories from that rather ugly period in human history.
UPDATE: Solomonia takes issue with my argument. Be sure to read his well-written, well-argued take here.
43 Comments
We covered that in Oregon’s public schools…but then, we’ve got a notable Japanese population.
I thought the same thing when I heard about it on the radio this morning.
The firebombing of Tokyo was never a secret, although I think the bombing of Dresden was much more famous due to the death toll. I don’t know about middle school, but I definitely rember this from highschool history. War is hell.
We covered that rather superficially and sterilly… no mention of casualties or the fact that some consider it a war crime…
I was acutally suspended for three days on a similar subject. My 10th grade history teacher was going through the list of American abuses making sure that anything in our text book that highlighted Nazi atrocities was firmly grounded in an understanding of how America wan’t perfect either.
Then some other classes were shown a Japanese language narrated slide presentation of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You really had to see the impact it had on the students. Everybody was walking around very depressed. It was like the whole school was in mourning.
Then my class got to watch the slide show. We were given a translated transcript of the narration. The first slide said, “On the morning of blah blah blah, the young children of Hiroshima woke up hoping for a quick end to the war.”
That was a little too much for me, so I complained, and I was kicked out of class very quickly and then suspended for three days and had to write a 5 page essay on the war. I used our text book and wrote about the Batan Death March and Japanese biological experiments in China —- two of the things in our text book which we did not cover. We did spend a couple days on the Japanese prisoners in the US.
And I am from what everybody considers a conservative part of the US.
I don’t mind a discussion of the Tokyo bombing or the use of atomic weapons or other things. But, I don’t get the feeling people like my feel good high school history teacher really wants discussion to begin with.
Another example of this I like to tell was in elementary school when the teacher (who told us one day while showing a book by Carl Sagan on the universe, in response to a 3rd grader’s question, that one day we’d have to give up our ideas about God (no shit……she said it. He hesitated a bit as if thinking about what would happen if students told their parents about it……but nothing did))……was telling us about the wonderful Mayan indians.
She was telling us what an idealic society they had and such an advanced civilizatoin with much bigger cities than in Europe and without the rot and filth.
She told us about this great game they played that was like soccer and basketball combined.
It sounded like a wonderful place. I got kind of pissed off about 15 years later when I learned, after the Mayan writing system was cracked, how the losing team from another village often got sacrificed to the winning team’s gods. And yes, this Eden like pre-Western society did in fact have season warfare on others to expand areas of influence, and yes, they did have hunman sacrifices regularly and so on……
It is amazing what you can do with history by what you want to talk about and what you want to leave out and what you want to believe. I’m sure I am not too different……..but at least I realize it……
Why would it be a “war crime”?
Population centers were routinely targerted by all sides as a matter of course. It was the way war was fought then. Its a mistake to use current norms of conduct during wartime NOW to judge the past.
You can only post here once a day? I get filtered out based on IP address if I post here more than once.
Going back to the subject. The difference here is that it wasn’t the US who started the war. It was Japan.
There’s no question that the firebombing of Dresden, an event roughly equal in its horror, gets more attention from historians. Maybe if Kurt Vonnegut would have been a POW in Tokyo instead of Dresden, we’d all know more about it. I doubt it. I think it’s natural, due to our mostly European roots, that Americans are more interested in the European war. That and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are even better examples of America’s total war against Japan. I found the slant of the article to be more interesting than the Marmot’s reaction. I think the reason the Japanese can forgive us so quickly is that they consider themselves equals, unlike the Koreans who have their historical outlook tainted by their ingrained master/slave mentality.
The only way to truly judge the necessity of firebombing Japanese cities is to review the reality of the Pacific War (a recent book “Touched by Fire” might help), and then transport yourself back to 1945 as a member of one the Marine or Army divisions earmarked for the invasion of Japan.
Breaking the enemy’s will to fight is an ugly and necessary part of war. And as others have pointed out: We weren’t the ones who bombed Pearl Harbor.
I come from South Carolina…hey bo, what’s a textbook?
a bit of nitpicking in reply to usinkorea’s:
“We did spend a couple days on the Japanese prisoners in the US.”
They were Japanese Americans, not Japanese.
“The problem is a matter to be taken up with the local school boards who set the agenda that the teachers allegedly follow”
The gov’t run schools in the USA report only to the evil union of socialsts called the National Educational Assocation (NEA). You wanna teach? You gotta buy your way into the union, bub.
And sadly, only deluded people believe that “local participation” makes a difference in a gov’t run school. I really, REALLY wish this wasn’t true, but it is. Case in point, the Portland School super held a meeting to ‘get input’ into her new budget plan. After the meeting she laid out her pre-decided plan regardless of any ‘input’. Folks were pissed off, but the ‘community’ has no ‘input’ beyond paying taxes. Grrr.
“or the fact that some consider it a war crime”
All wars are a crime.
Did the firebombing of German and Japanese cities hasten the length of the war? Probably not. But the Allies thought it might sap the enemies will to fight on. And that’s a valid reason to firebomb cities with no military value. It’s war. In the end, however, it accomplished nothing but to kill a whole bunch of civillains.
Only under the threat of total annihilation via the atom bomb did Japan surrender. Some people may say it was barbarism on America’s part, but I personally think it saved lives on both sides. An invasion of Japan would have been a blood bath.
I saw some crap on History Channel of all places that purported the Japanese were putting out peace feelers in June and July 1945 and that it was the evil SecState (Charles Evans Hughes?) who put the kibosh on the communication from some peace-loving Jap prince. Hence, the atomic bombs were unnecessary. It didn’t suprise me that in the credits it said it was a BBC/Asahi TV production (Asahi being among the most lefty of the media in Japan, and the Beeb - what do I need to say?).
This BBC piece makes it sound like it’s oh so surprising these people don’t hate America. Could it be they hate their leaders for putting them through this crap? Can a BBC tool imagine that possibility?
BTW - I don’t remember whether I learned about this in school, but as I read all kinds of history on my own time I certainly knew about the raid and I wasn’t subject to teacher interpretations on anything. If you have kids make sure they get their knowledge from plenty of sources outside the classroom.
Thorin, do you think that Koreans are the only Asians with a grudge against Japan?
You should look into why the Chinese despise the Japanese, while the Taiwanese look up to them.
Hi, I’ve just started browsing this site and thoroughly enjoyed the articles and posts and everybody’s insight–
in regards to this particular article and the comments above, I think that it’s impossible to get an unbiased report of any historical event–
that said, I’d like to point out that the US was putting the squeeze on Japan from 1940 onward–culminating on the oil embargo in 1941, which would have devastated the burgeoning Japanese economy and society. Roosevelt gave Japan two options:
1. give up all territories acquired (except Korea), or
2. face the consequences of the embargo
both comparable to evisceration for Japan. They made a third choice, which was to attack the US (many academics believe Roosevelt purposefully pushed Japan to the edge–that is not to say he anticipated Pearl Harbor, but that he wanted them to draw us into the fight so that we could get involved in the war on both fronts).
In any case, I find the argument “it’s ok because they did it first” to be completely unconvincing–in this specific realm of human rights/ war crimes. The Japanese may have committed atrocities elsewhere, even to the US, but we still made a moral choice to begin strategic bombing (we had been launching precision guide air raids before that, unsuccessfully). Although, if I was forced to defend the choice, I might say that there were few studies and analyses back in those days (as opposed to today) that agree that air raids (and punishing civilian populations) have very little effect on war outcomes (or, surprisingly, on breaking the will of the population). Still, the leaders back then obviously knew the significance of this decision–the commander of the air force was relieved of his post when he voiced his opposition to commencing the fire-bombing. I’m trying not to pass moral judgement on anyone–we did what we thought we had to do: we didn’t want a bloody ground invasion and we thought this was the best alternative, we chose between a rock and a hard place (much like the Japanese did in 1941–right or wrong, justified or unjustified is infinitely debatable, but what isn’t is that it was an immense tragedy– 90,000 dead in one night (compared to 75,000/45,000 in Hiroshima/Nagasaki). We killed 900,000 Japanese civilians (1.2% of their population) from March-August 1945. Just to get a sense of these numbers, we killed 360,000 people in Germany (0.5% of their population).
sorry about the essay, I could probably go on and on, but i’ll leave it here for now.
I’ve just posted a response to this, trying to add more historical context. It ends off thus:
“The only TV news that I can sit through for more than 15 minutes without channel-surfing away (usually in response to “celebrity justice” stories) is The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, which ends each broadcast with a photographic listing of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq (no other individuals killed in Iraq or elsewhere). I view them all. Can you imagine how long The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer would have to be to list onscreen the names and photos of just the U.S. military personnel killed during World War II? It would have to be NewsWeek 24/7 with Jim Lehrer. I remind myself of that when I get too depressed about the state of the world 60 years later.”
Your casualty figures are a bit off there jh, Japanese civilian casualties were never that high. Aside from the Tokyo bombings, Nagasaki/Hiroshima, and Okinawa, there weren’t any major instances of civilians killed that I can recall. I’ve double checked a couple of online sources and none have Japanese civilian casualties listed at over 390,000 killed. Thats not to say the 900,000 figure is not possible, as I have seen a few places which listed total Japanese casualties ranging from 1,500,000-2,000,000 while the concensus of Japanese military casualties is at 1,200,000-1,300,000 million but it is questionable.
bombs and killing are bad
Never read about this in H.S. history but knew about it on my own. I do know that there was a real “belief” that Japan would not surrender and that 99% of the population would fight on and never surrender. The belief was that if they showed how hopeless it was to continue fighting the Japanese would surrender. Some even argue that the only reason Japan did surrender was that the USSR turned its full strength to Japan after the defeat of Germany. They also firebombed a few Japanese cities. Japan was afraid the Russians would not be as forgiving as the US and would lose all its colonies and more of its traditional Japanese territories if the Soviet Union got far into Japan.
Re: my statistics
should have provided a source but forgot–my numbers are from Robert Pape’s “Why Japan Surrendered” article, now part of one of his books.
International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn 1993), pp. 154-201.
also a pretty good discussion of stats are in Sherry’s “Rise of American Air Power”
and the USSBS (US Strategic Bombing Survey, commissioned by FDR)reports are also another reputable source.
http://www.archives.gov/resear.....rg243.html
(Japanese military casualties are set at around 780, 000 by Pape)
and from what I’ve read about strategic bombing, the air force systematically bombed cities in stages (i.e. stage 1-cities w/ population over 1 million, stage 2-cities w/ pop over 500, 000, etc) and these fire-bombing raids lasted five months (from March to August).
hope that clears up some ambiguities–stats are never infallible, I agree, but these looked like pretty decent studies to me.
best, jh
Sorry Marmot, you’re off on this one in my view. I’ve heard about the firebombing of Tokyo only about a million and two times - maybe you’re upset because it’s not put in sufficiently negative context for you? Well it shouldn’t be. I didn’t learn much about it in history class, I’ll admit, but that’s because High School history sort of cut out just before that time (and I was in AP History!), but I doubt it was because American History texts couldn’t face our horrible history in WW2 do you?
War is bad. People get hurt. WW2 was total war. Total war of two populations - two civilizations. Japan was an empire when being an “Empire,” “Colonization” and “Cultural Imperialism” hadn’t been watered down to their usual use today and when it meant that a country like Japan, by its own choice, was viciously marauding its way across Asia, executing, enslaving, pillaging, raping, ruling from abroad…
Funny thing about civilian casualties…my dad was a civilian before the Japanese decided to bomb Pearl Harbor. Leave aside that Japanese industry was disbursed, and that even if bombing had been more precise there was little to bomb, leave aside that the Japanese were NOT about to surrender, leave aside who started that war and the way in which THEY conducted themselves day-to-day in a way that made the Allies on their worst days look like pikers, leave aside that Japanese arms and soldiers actually come from somewhere, somewhere you need to take out if you ever want the war to end…leave it all aside and just ask, before you judge our fathers about they way they conducted a just war that liberated an entire region and assured that WE’D likely never have to fight the same war again, ask, if we had tried to fight the kind of “immaculate combat” some people seem to think is necessary, how many years longer you would have liked the war to have gone on (if it ever would have ended) and how many more people would have been killed (on both sides), how many more American sons and daughters and children would have been killed fighting, and died in a country who’s economy would have been stressed from continuing interminable war - a war we didn’t start? Comparing the Allied bombing of Tokyo to the war-crimes committed by the imperial power we were fighting is unjust, unfair and morally tone-deaf.
IMHO.
How’s it goin’, BTW?
Thorin,
The first thing I thought of when I read this article was Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”. Although the book was written specifically about the Dresden bombing, somewhere in the story he mentions that Tokyo was firebombed as well, and that more people died during those firebombings than during the nuclear bomb drops.
May I add, without being accused of flogging a dying animal, that what bothers me is the implied moral equivalence: We killed so I can’t criticize you for killing. Stripped of context and perspective it tells you nothing and is really a dangerous thing.
My initial attempt to post got caught in your spam trap, btw. Second time hitting submit with no changes went through. FYI.
Can I recommend this documentary to all people:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0317910/combined
Here for excertps: http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/
THis film talked a lot about the firebombing of Tokyo. it was given quite a bit of press when it came out in 2003.
I learned this in college. There is a lot left out of HS history.
More than’a few cities’ were firebombed in Japan. The precise figure is 67 cities, in addition to the conventional bombing of factories, naval yards, etc. On average more than 50% of each city was destroyed. I came upon the figures awhile back and decided to kill more than a few hours by making this handy map:
http://img217.exs.cx/img217/48.....ine6eq.jpg
(It has percentage of surface area destroyed for each city). I’ve always thought maps create a visual understanding lacking in written statistics. It’s pretty staggering when you see all those red dots (even as far north as Aomori - how that was pulled off I’d like to know).
Perhaps this was why the Japanese made peace overtures in the spring and summer of 1945? According to this article - http://www.doublestandards.org/blum5.html - 3 or 4 peace overtures were made. The author’s point of view is obvious, but sources are cited for the very curious.
The quoted casuality figures for the atomic bombings are rather low as well (75000/45000) as they account for only those killed in the immediate aftermath and are based on census figures (did the census include the 10000+ Korean forced labourers there?) - they don’t account for those killed by radiation in the ensuing months and years (which doubles the tally at the very least); these people most certainly should be counted as victims of the bombs.
Solomon — You’re comments are duly noted, and I understand where you are coming from. But I have to take issue. Firstly, my primary issue is one of historical recollection, not who was right or wrong. But since we’re talking about history, let me ask a couple of questions (and make a couple of comments) on your argument above:
War is bad. People get hurt. WW2 was total war. Total war of two populations - two civilizations. Japan was an empire when being an ?橫Empire,?? ??Colonization?? and ??Cultural Imperialism?? hadn??t been watered down to their usual use today and when it meant that a country like Japan, by its own choice, was viciously marauding its way across Asia, executing, enslaving, pillaging, raping, ruling from abroad???
No argument with the beginning. I’m not quite certain, however, why its so significant that Japan was an empire. Yes, I guess Japan, “by its own choice, was viciously marauding its way across Asia, executing, enslaving, pillaging, raping, ruling from abroad.” But like how in war, bad things happen, in Great Power politics, bad things happen, especially in the international environment of the first half of the 20th century. For that matter, “viciously marauding its way across Asia” was exactly what the Europeans had been doing (albeit, by the First World War, this task had already been completed). They were still in posession of the colonies when the Pacific War began, and they took them back when it ended. (and, as would be the cases in Indonesia and Indochina, fight very nasty wars to keep ‘em). Which is why we didn’t fight the Pacific War to end imperialism — we fought it to keep the Open Door open in China. Or, to put this a bit more bluntly, we fought to maintain a system where all the Great Powers had the opportunity to screw the Chinese, but no one power could usurp for itself a monopoly on screwing the Chinese. Yes, the Japanese got greedy, and for it, they got the ass-whooping that any state that make really poor geopolitical decisions richly deserves. Although in their defense, the Europeans (and Soviets) had already taken most of the prime colonial real estate, so for a late developing state like Japan, there weren’t too many other direction in which it could go.
leave it all aside and just ask, before you judge our fathers about they way they conducted a just war that liberated an entire region and assured that WE??D likely never have to fight the same war again, ask, if we had tried to fight the kind of ?橫immaculate combat?? some people seem to think is necessary, how many years longer you would have liked the war to have gone on (if it ever would have ended) and how many more people would have been killed (on both sides), how many more American sons and daughters and children would have been killed fighting, and died in a country who??s economy would have been stressed from continuing interminable war - a war we didn??t start?
Interesting points. Firstly, let me say that the Pacific War did NOT leave a whole region liberated. The Europeans came right back in as soon as it ended, and in a couple of cases, had to be kicked out by force of arms. China, of course, was “liberated,” although one wonder what that means, exactly, when you turn the country back over to Chang Kai-shek. Korea, of course, was “liberated,” although, of course, the word loses some of its luster when one half of the peninsula gets turned over to former collaborators who spend much of the next 40 years trying to emulate their former colonial masters while the other half gets turned over to Stalinists who do their very best to make the other half look good. In fact, prior to the 1980s, how many truly “free” nations can you name in East Asia? I can only think of one — Japan. Irony or ironies, it would seem the only country that really got “liberated” in 1945 was the former enemy. Everyone else would have to wait.
Of course, had the Japanese won, East Asia would probably have been a lot worse off, and just to make this perfectly clear, the Pacific War was a war the U.S. had to fight and win. I would think most East Asians would agree that post-war U.S. hegemony in East Asia was a whole lot better than a Japanese-led one. But before we go patting ourselves on the back, some perspective.
Now, as for the argument that the Tokyo bombing was justified because it saved lives in the end by getting the war over quicker, well, I’m inclined to agree that tactics of that sort can lead to the results you describe, but then again, that’s the key, right? You have to WIN. Had, for example, the Rape of Nanking actually succeeded in breaking Chinese morale, it could have ended the Sino-Japanese War and, heck, perhaps even prevented the greater Pacific War. In that case, it wouldn’t have been a war crime, right? See, this is the problem I have. Japan is held to account for the things it did in a losing effort, while the U.S. isn’t held to account for the things it did in a winning one. And this leaves me nothing but cynical. If, ultimately, the difference between a war crime and a necessary act of war is who wins in the end, why the moralistic calls for self-reflection and repentence?
How??s it goin??, BTW?
Pretty good, thanks. See you redesigned your site. Looking pretty sharp
I learned a long time ago that the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10 probably caused more deaths than the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This fact is often mentioned at least peripherally in many standard texts on WWII, maybe not in standard high school history texts. I’d have to go back and look in my old 60’s era ones to see, ones that were printed long before the current era of political correctness and leftist domination of the NEA began
(One junior high history text I remember had a incredible amount of detail on stuff like this, our teacher made us write out stuff from it, caused an incredible amount of yawning and shortcutting amonst my peers who like most average Americans weren’t interested. However I’ve always found history compelling).
In trying to go back and apply “modern”standards to this time period I think most everyone (to include many here) completely ignore the context of the times. For example, look at the current obsession with the weekly US casualty count in Iraq and its use by war opponents.
In WWII the US was losing hundreds of men killed per week (!) and this went on week after week continuously. From retrospect the Allied victories over the Axis always look like they were “inevitable” but it was far from seeming that way to the people (and the decisionmakers) of the time, the ones who had to make decisions (and risk their lives carrying them out) then — not with the comfortable historical “armchair” perspective of years hence.
The limitations of weapons technology at the time were significant, and military and civilian leaders looked for ways to use the weapons they had, in order to have an effect on the enemy — they weren’t surfeit with dozens of different options. If you can’t put yourself in their positions I don’t see how you can judge in retrospect from some holy place on high, unless you are a traditional pacifist and opposed to all wars at all times (like the old Amish grandfather in the Harrison Ford movie Witness, the only kind I find worthy of personal respect).
The strategic bombing of Japan was accepted as a given by all concerned, a way to shorten the war. Because of many factors, it was not producing much results early on — extreme long range even for US strategic bombers, teething problems with B-29’s which were severe, bombing at very high altitude which due to severe weather (jetstream over Japan) was causing bombs to miss. Coupled with the “dispersal” of much of Japanese war production into small shops scattered throughout the cities. Stymied by the high altitude and heavy defensive armament of US strategic bombers early on, the Japanese Air Defense fighters were learning to cope by using some of the same tactics as the Luftwaffe, to include kamikaze type ramming attacks, and losses were increasing steadily. Unlike Europe it was too far for American escort fighters to acccompany the bombers even with external fuel tanks; I think this remained the case until the very end of the war.
Curtis LeMay was brought in from Europe to take command of 20th (?) Air Force in July 44 because of the problems they were having. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
Yes, that’s right, “that” LeMay, don’t worry the Wikipedia article will give you the “con” case on him. I see from it that the Japanese called him the “brutal LeMay”, I suppose I should listen to them and take heed, if anyone was ever qualified to be a judge of brutality it was the WWII Japanese.
The Wikipedia article doesn’t cover it, and I don’t have my text references handy, but as I recall LeMay assessed the problems and took drastic action, to include stripping the B-29’s of all their defensive weapons (to increase ability to carry fuel), stopping the use of daylight raids and going to night attacks, and bringing down the attack altitude to only 5000 feet to end the scattering effect. Most significantly for the topic of this post, he decided on the use of firebombing, due to the particular vulnerability of Japanese cities to this tactic and the aforementioned dispersal of Japanese industry into small shops.
The culmination of this was the Tokyo attack. For the “complicity” of others besides LeMay, go back and ready the contemporaneous remarks of many other American leaders of the time such as Halsey. These chaps make easy targets now, but they served at the pleasure of Roosevelt who could have had them sacked at any time; I don’t see anyone going back to judge Roosevelt a war criminal in retrospect, do you? After all, he could have modified the “unconditional surrender” policy long before 1945 and begun negotiations for a peace; certainly this is how the Japanese expected the war to end, allowing them to keep their empire and a significant portion of their conquests.
Judge them as you see fit of course. Just be aware that the retrospective application of contemporary standards, for use as a “club” in current national and international political debate, may have unintended consequences. For example, “traditional” Americans may come to judge that the risk of all-out war (now presumably including a possible nuclear exchange), in the defense of “allies” who insist on American moral equivalence to criminal world regimes of the past, just isn’t worth it anymore.
If the government of the ROK were to fall tomorrow what difference would it make to the average American? Whoever takes over, even if it were the NorK Communist party, will still want the production of Hyundais and Samsungs for export to go on….
Sorry for the length, M, my only excuse is that this is a serious topic for serious times.
I had written out a pretty good comment yesterday that touched on the “no unconditional surrender” idea yesterday, but it was eaten by the Spamming clause.
This is an inadequate version. There is a book I can’t remember the title of or author’s name that came out last year or two years ago. Saw the author on C-Span then. It was something about the “Ten Myths of the Pacific War” or WWII altogether or what not. His argument was that the US “clearly” did not have to either invade Japan or nuke it to gain an acceptable peace deal, because Japan was “clearly” a defeated nation and “unconditional” surrender was an abnormal even barbaric demand. It was “clear” the US could have made peace well before the decision to use the A-bomb.
Not a standard view, but views like this or Bruce Cumings make for better TV I guess…
It reminded me of one of my favorite poets - Robert Lowell. He upset his community where his family was respected by refusing to serve in WWII. His letter to the military board said he would have gladly fought in the war in the early period, but at the time (late in the war) he couldn’t agree morally to fight against Nazi Germany, because it was clearly a defeated nation, and it was inhumane to make war on a people until “unconditional surrendender” and he added that no people had had to endure such a hardship since the South in the American Civil War.
There is a whole lot to chew over in these statements.
Can you imagine what kind of fundamental seachange in social thinking Japan might not have had if its militaristic government had been able to cut a deal that ended the war but left it in power? Japan has a bad habit of not wanting to admit or teach its bad acts, but it is very, very clear after 1945 their society went through mega changes in thinking.
Can you imagine if Hitler or his second or third in command and the heart of the regime had been able to cut a deal? Boy, I guess it would have been a neat way for the US capitalists to avoid the Russians from taking Berlin and half of Germany………..but woudl it have been wise by any stretch of the imagination?
Or, how about cutting a deal with the slave-holding aristocracy in the South where I’m from? I mean, looking back even today at how far black people had NOT come in society in the South until after the Civil Rights Movement of the 19
“The moral is to the physical as three are to one.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
Whatever you think of the relative morality of the various actors in WWII, the big issue I think is how everyone has dealt with their actions since then. The United States and most European nations have openly combed over their actions in great detail. Japan has tried to sweep its actions under the historical rug. I bet if Japan (its scholars, politicians, et al.) were to approach their history — good and bad — the same way people do in the United States (Canada, England, Germany, etc.), I bet you’d get rid of 80% of the non-stop whining about apologies and crap.
Marmot. Solomon’s got you on this one. That’s the problem with relative morality; no foundation. The war was ugly; the quicker it was won by the US the better. “wages of sin” was the right assessment.
The Tokyo firebombing raids could have been avoided… by Japan, which was free to surrender at any time. But its leaders chose not to, even well after it became clear Japan would lose the war.
The lesson here is that if you start a war with America, rest assured that America will finish it, and not necessarily in a way that you’ll like.
We may go out of our way to minimize the war’s impact on your people or, we may just decide to protect our own troops’ lives instead, by using overwhelming force to wrap things up as quickly as possible.
If you don’t like them apples, don’t attack us.
If you attack us and don’t like the way things are going, then by all means surrender, and we will treat you fairly in your defeat.
But if you keep fighting us, know that we will destroy you. Don’t come crying to us about it later on when some of your prime real estate has been turned into smoking craters.
Marmot,
I have to side with Solomon on this. Perhaps some day we can discuss post world war European aims in Asia over a couple of beers or bottles of wine. You might find some of my historical insights of interest. After all, the U.S. was returning to the Philippines to send it off to independence, which was likewise the British case in India/Pakistan. The original division of Korea was supposed to be a mere, administrative decision (a la the Chinese/British 16th Parallel in Indochina). And I do believe you’d find Henry and Claire Booth Luce’s role vis-a-vis Chaing Kai-shek and the Soong sisters entertaining. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men, or in this case, maybe the hastily made plans.
I do, however, find your parallels drawn between Nanking and the fire-bombing of Tokyo a bit facile. I hope you reconsider the various aspects of both actions and discern some disturbing differences.
There are worse things in the world than war, and being at the mercy of a ruthless, implacable enemy a la the Japanese Army of WWII, that considers your particular ethnic group to be subhuman, has to be one of them.
uninkorea: It’s interesting that Robert Lowell considered that the Jews had suffered as much as the Germans. And I assume that his sense of humanity included those death camp inmates who were gleefully exterminated by their masters right up until the end of the war. I hope they’re not putting any poems if his on the holocaust memorial.
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