The Daily Yomiuri ran an editorial Thursday morning stating that though outgoing Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma’s remarks about the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan at the end of WWII were ill-timed and inconsiderate, they are historically accurate.
[O]ne of the major factors in bringing the tragedy of the atomic bombings to Japan was the failure of Japanese political leaders’ diplomatic maneuvers to end the war. Taking the foolish measure of asking the Soviet Union, a potential enemy, to broker a peace deal, Japan wasted its time negotiating with the country, leading to the atomic bombings and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war.
I believe that history can never be 100% accurate.
So, why waste our time trying to find out what exacly happened? And real motives can be “illogical” too.
Maybe Truman dropped the bomb because he had a frustrated sex affair with a nasty little j-girl.
I suppose it is “historically” accurate to say that the two atomic bombings saved “millions of lives that would have otherwise been lost” since, after all, we can never know for sure how long the war would have continued and how many would have died if the bombs weren’t dropped.
There is no way to “prove” that more or less people would have died in a hypothetical situation, so those who claim “lives were saved” cannot logically be proven wrong.
They, of course, cannot “prove” their case either, but that doesn’t stop them.
(Now, I suppose someone will post a plethora of “documented evidence” that the Japanese were “ready to fight to the last man, woman and child” rather than surrender. It still doesn’t PROVE that the bombings saved many more lives than they took. It only suggests so. And weakly at that, since people’s words and actions rarely match, even — should I say “especially”? — in war time.)
There actually is a plethora of evidence that the Japanese were preparing to fight to the last breath, but I’m not going to post it, because, as you say, words and actions don’t always match. The reactions to defeat suggest that the Japanese were more than willing to stop fighting if only they could. It’s getting to that stage - being allowed to stop - that is the crucial factor.
I don’t personally think the bombs saved “millions”. Not that many. Hundreds of thousands, yes. Maybe even about a million, possibly. But millions, plural?
there have been great advances made in Math since 1945..
Hopefully, nuclear attacks never happen again in this world. Its a truly horrific event, but this should emphasize the greater value of sincere diplomacy and coexistence because grave consequences are at stake, and they will only keep escalating with advancements in technology. I dont get the impression that the Japanese were the most reasonable people to deal with at that time, and as a result, this horror story became a reality. Lets remember that Japan put itself in this situation, and unfortunately, they received a very harsh punishiment. Whether or not it was necessary can be debated over and over again, but lets not fight the wars of our fathers (grandfathers actually) either.
Amen - samSnead. Well put.
The biggest factor should be The Emperor System. If former emperor decided to surrender earlier in 1945, (there were enough reasons to do so), hundreds of thousands Japanese civilian lives were actually saved. But this subject is still a taboo to refer to in Japan to date.
A good thing what America brought to Japan in post war was the new constitution with the Article Nine. And I wished America had abolished the emperor system at the same time. Otherwise, at least former emperor had to be punished because he was the person who approved the war to start.
The emperor system is possibly causing a psychological obstacle even today in overcoming some collective behaviors in Japan. It’s like godfather syndrome. This is not my unique opinion, but of many liberal(not only left-wing) people.
SamSnead, what I concern is that American and allies’ negative attitude toward (nuclear) disarmament could possibly give a chance to justify Islamic terrorists attack. I hope my concern will just be an imaginary fear.
On the other hand, by most accounts it was the urging of the government and military that prolonged the war longer than Hirohito might have liked. And when he did issue the surrender, a faction of the army attempted a coup.
I don’t really think monarchies have any place in the modern democratic world, but the Allies might have been right in thinking that preserving the emperor system made the favourable reconstruction of Japan a lot easier.
Anonymous, I know most people generally recognize the circumstance as you describe. But if then, was Hirohito an unsubstantial power(reigning without ruling) or just a puppet whom military or ministry (later the US occupation HQ) manipulated ? Or maybe it was the essence of the emperor system ? This is exactly the same characteristic what we see in today’s bureaucratic system of Japan. That is like as if nobody seems to be in the position to account.
Even monarchies have gone, the surrounding structures were preserved. And the sentiment of wide population is being the same although the present emperor system has far more democratic faces. I think we can’t call it very democratic. Moreover the problem is the taboo itself that we can’t argue about the emperor system in Japan at all.
TofuUnion is overstating the case when he uses the word “taboo.” It gives the impression that there is some grand conspiracy of silence, whereas that is not that case at all. Many things may not be politically wise (such as Kyuma’s statement) but that does not mean they are taboo in Japan. It just leads to misinformation about Japan. Even with the general Emperor System thing, to say it cannot be debated in Japan is to ignore the many people who *are* debating it - a browse through a good bookstore should turn up books from all ends of the spectrum, from populist right-wing stuff like Kokumin no Hinkaku to rabid left-wing anti-Emperor stuff (most serious Japanese historical scholarship is left-wing, and anti-Emperor System: one of my profs when I was at uni went so far as to discourage us from using Heisei dates as that, he felt, was a tacit acceptance of the Emperor System).
I recently read an interesting book on it actually, from the far-left POV: Manga Nihonjin to Tennou, by Kariya testu (of ‘Oishinbo’ fame) that combines manga and prose to attack not just or solely the Emperor System per se, but the entire mindset of vertical society and “shut-up-and-obey” that he feels is rotting Japan from the inside - this “surrounding structure” TU mentions. It’s worth a look, if only to see how angry some Japanese are about this supposedly ‘taboo’ topic.
The degree of involvement of the Emperor in the War is one of the perennial favourites of historical debate. I’m not going there at the moment, but I do not think that the intelligent and far-seeing men who brought about the Meiji Restoration would have been stupid enough to actually restore power to the Emperor. The trouble is that everything was *written* to give him supreme power, and in practice he had almost none. The only two decisive acts Showa made before the surrender was to put down the 2-26 Uprising and break the final surrender deadlock, basically.
My personal opinion is that the Emperor should have abdicated after the war. Even if his responsibility for starting it was only ceremonial, he could have taken ceremonial responsibility and abdicated. I am disinclined to remove the Emperor himself, as a position though, since it has lasted so long after all - it’s kind of like an Intangible Cultural Property in that respect. The system needs fixing, not the position. Back to something like the Edo-period Emperor perhaps - and move him back to Kyoto perhaps? Might help decentralise Tokyo as well….