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Post by Moose on Aug 8, 2015 15:47:00 GMT
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Post by robert on Aug 28, 2015 10:42:20 GMT
This is a remarkable story. He was just a mile from the epicenter of the blast and was thrown from his bicycle. Wow. And to think, all of these years, all the pain he has had to bear. And for what? The most horrific thing our government has ever done. Aside from the genocide of an entire race of Native Americans!
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Aug 29, 2015 8:49:12 GMT
Yeah that's a good question. What was it for?
I come from a generation that was born after WWII but I knew many men who had survived imprisonment by the Japanese. They too were left horribly scarred and not just physically, although the physical damage was horrific and staggering. It is beyond my ability to describe. As horrific and outrageousness as the physical damage was the psychological damage was worse. It would be bad enough if this was done to men and men only but it was inflicted on women and children who were captured after the fall of Singapore. Their treatment reached an all time low in human behaviour. A disgraceful accolade that is only shared by the German death camps of Auschwitz, Bergan-Belsen et al.
Nobody talks about this atrocity these days, certainly not the Japanese!
If those two bombs brought their suffering to an end by one day - it's justified. I say that reluctantly but it's justified.
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Post by Moose on Aug 29, 2015 17:22:24 GMT
It's a hard one. I am aware of the Japanese atrocities - my granddad had a fierce hatred of the Japanese from fighting in that war (he was not, himself, imprisoned by them though). I remember him saying that it was a cruel culture and that they happily treated their own people in the same way. And yet .. and yet ... I feel that atomic warfare is evil; that we've unleashed something that will one day destroy us all. And there is something that innately disturbs me about the idea of deliberately killing civilians - though of course all sides did that through aerial warfare. Incredible that a handful of egomaniacs can bring about such a huge amount of suffering in the world. What the fuck did Hitler NEED all that 'living space' for, anyway?
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Post by robert on Aug 29, 2015 20:30:40 GMT
I think of the rape of Nanking...but even with that I can't come to the acceptance of dropping nukes on them.
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Post by Moose on Aug 29, 2015 21:00:24 GMT
*nods*
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2015 22:07:28 GMT
As a teenager I once watched a series of documentaries on World War II and everything that happened, including concentration camps and survivors telling their story, still crying about it after so many years. It was awful and often brought me to tears to hear about all the horrible things which humans did to each other.
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Post by Moose on Aug 29, 2015 22:35:17 GMT
Aye. That instinct to kill and dominate took us to to top of the evolutionary tree but it came at a price.
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Post by Mari on Aug 30, 2015 9:49:39 GMT
My Japanese classes pretty much never advanced beyond this era. I think the first bomb was necessary to stop the war. The military men in power would never have stopped it as long as they lived. They were used to seeing people as pawns and the people at home were kept ignorant. The letters sent home from boys in the military were heavily censured and shore leave as we know it was not a thing. The bomb made people aware and gave the emperor the leverage he needed to act (though he should have done it sooner, figurehead or not). The second bomb however, was not necessary in my opinion. The Emperor had already pleaded with his people to lay down their arms (and that was a HUGE deal: the people had never seen nor heard the Emperor before and here he was pleading on the radio for everyone to stop fighting. Keep in mind that to the Japanese the Emperor was a descendant of God) and the surrender was being organised, yet they still dropped the 2nd bomb.
By the way, in current culture the Japanese people ARE aware of the atrocities they committed and respect that some people still hate them for it. It came up in 2 conversations I had this holiday. It's just not something they talk about all the time. The Japanese government on the other hand is quite a different matter. They should just hurry up and apologise already, though really they are far too late for it to be sincere. Note that the Emperor and Empress did apologise as far as they could without angering the government.
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Post by Moose on Aug 31, 2015 17:35:14 GMT
That's interesting - I had not realised that. With German people I've found that pretty much the first thing that they say when they meet an English person is 'I'm not a Nazi' or variations thereon
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Post by Miisa on Aug 31, 2015 17:57:55 GMT
I only recently in a podcast found out about Jon Rabe, the Nazi of Nanking, a verified Nazi who actually saved tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people in the 30's in China, using his Nazi credentials to let them escape the Japanese massacre.
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Post by Moose on Aug 31, 2015 21:20:56 GMT
linky? (not meaning that I doubt what you say but that it sounds fascinting so I want to know more)
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Post by tangent on Aug 31, 2015 21:21:51 GMT
We stayed in a hotel in Majorca one year with mostly German and Dutch families. Every evening, there was a fun time when a compere got us playing games and every so often, he would play his theme tune... which was the Dambusters' March. German families were quite happily walking around, humming the tune and spreading their arms out like airoplane wings. I just wondered if they realized the significance. They probably did.
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Aug 31, 2015 22:11:05 GMT
I only recently in a podcast found out about Jon Rabe, the Nazi of Nanking, a verified Nazi who actually saved tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people in the 30's in China, using his Nazi credentials to let them escape the Japanese massacre. Oskar Schindler was also a member of the Nazi party
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Post by Moose on Sept 1, 2015 1:54:37 GMT
Yeah well .. I've sometimes wondered about Oscar Schindler. But hey it was a heartwarming story, no?
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Sept 1, 2015 2:21:39 GMT
Forget the film, that was a film about Isaac Stern, it cast no insight into Schindler.
Oskar Schindler was a much more complex character.
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Post by Miisa on Sept 1, 2015 4:51:54 GMT
Yes, Rabe is sometimes called the Oskar Schindler of China, being less famous than Schindler.
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