Japanese public feels they were the victims in ww2,feel no remorse or shame

[Vern Humphrey]

Little Boy and the Fat Man were the one and only reason the Japanese got off their backside and down on their knees to surrender. True, we only had one spare A-bomb, but truth is, there were not a lot of decent targets left... except of course good ole Tokyo. Plop that third little bit of snap crackle and pop on top of the imperial palace and the sun would have set on the empire of the sun. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

The problem was assassination was the basis of Japanese government -- a leader who talked surrender would be killed by the fanatics. It took the atomic bomb to break that strangle hold and make it possible to surrender.

[SUPERX-M1]

Added an edit to my orig post re atrocities.

[Mark in Ottawa]

When I visited the museum at Nagasaki, it was really all about how horrible the Americans were to have used the bomb. Every month on the anniverary of the day of the bombing they hold a religious memorial ceremony. We happened to be there that day and ended up chatting with some very charming Japanese students aged about 16. My sense was that they knew little or nothing about the actions of the Japanese military. Selective teaching of history and selective memory

[PaFrank]

We did bad stuff too. A neighbor of mine growing up was on a DD destroyer in the pacific. He said when there were survivors in the water they dropped a few shallow depth charges close by, hedgehogs too and that took care of them.

And all this shame for the past stuff is a load of crap. Thats what the demorats have been preaching, you know white guilt, reparations for past sins, all that crap.. Good for them, they shouldn't feel any shame.

[Vern Humphrey]

We did bad stuff too. A neighbor of mine growing up was on a DD destroyer in the pacific. He said when there were survivors in the water they dropped a few shallow depth charges close by, hedgehogs too and that took care of them.

And all this shame for the past stuff is a load of crap. Thats what the demorats have been preaching, you know white guilt, reparations for past sins, all that crap.. Good for them, they shouldn't feel any shame.

I recommend you read "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang.

[togor]

Mark Felton gives a nice in depth look at the machinations in the Japanese government from Hiroshima until the Missouri.

[jmm03]

It was a similar situation at the "peace" museum in Hiroshima. All of the exhibits were slanted toward the American aggression and no responsibility on the Japanese side for anything. The park that is adjacent to the museum at ground zero was full of people playing games and picnicking, I would have thought it might have been a more somber place given the reason the memorial was there, I remember thinking it was odd at the time. I don't believe that we needed to invade Japan, we were well on the way to burning them back to the stone age and we probably could have starved them into submission, a cold observation I know, but the military faction was wanting to fight to the last man,and expending our guys by invading rather than cutting the island off just did not make sense, hence the bomb. Jim

[blackhawknj]

Pearl Harbor fixed the image of Japanese as a treacherous and dishonorable enemy, nothing in the subsequent conduct of that war did anything to dispel.
By way of contrast, during the Siege of Santiago in 1898 the collierMerrimackwas sent into the harbor in a failed attempt to block it. Admiral Cervera sent his Chief of Staff under a flag of truce to inform our side that the crew had been rescued and were being cared for. During the Naval Battle of Santiago on July 3, when the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya started to burn, Captain J. W. Philip of the USS Texas told his men "Don't cheer, boys, those poor devils are dying!"

[togor]

My dad was in AAF pilot training for single seat aircraft when the war ended. Had there been an invasion of Japan (and there was no way we were going to let that regime rot on the Home Islands) he would have been flying close support missions. Not that he was unwilling to go, but he had no qualms about the bombs saving him a trip to Japan.

[blackhawknj]

The living advocates and devotees of air power ,the disciples of Giulio Douhet ( d. 1930) argued that
given enough resources they could defeat an enemy without committing ground troops except for occupation duties. In his 1908 novel The War in the Air H.G. Wells describes a Germain air fleet destroying the US Atlantic Fleet. Both sides refrained from gas warfare in WWII, to a large extent it is recognized that the Strategic Bombing Campaign weakened Germany not so much by destroying German industry as by diverting it, it took 8,000 rounds from the advanced German 88 to bring down a bomber, fighters in the Defense of the Reich were denied to the fronts, AA defense was very manpower intensive, even allowing that it was often old men and boys and POWs. The Bomb gave the air generals the weapon they always wanted and showed the Japanese that if they wanted to fight to the last man.....