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Do you not watch the news? The U.S. annually sends a representative or ambassador, sometimes the Vice President for the Nagasaki commemoration .I suppose overall though, yes, we should teach more about horrific events in world history. Especially events leading up to wars and any humanitarian violations. People quickly forget and history repeats itself.
TW Should we do more to acknowledge the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
A somber topic tonight
I’ve just watched a video of British soldiers who were on the boats the day of the Hiroshima bombings. It is a wake up call and a real shock to the system to hear tales of these men being told to face the opposite direction of the bombing site, and how when the bomb went off then the radioactive blast meant they were able to see their bones and blood vessels beneath their skin. How the mushroom cloud was so large they had to look at a 90° angle to see it
On these two days they estimate 226,000 may have been killed, both civilians and soldiers
In the video I saw one of the surviving Allied soldiers mentioned how there were approx 22,500 soldiers on those boats, and as of 2013 they estimated 13,500 of these men had died, with a very small minority dying ‘natural deaths’. The majority suffered with unusually high rates of cancer and other carcinogenic diseases
I have two questions:
• should we have a day or time period where we remember the losses and the tragedies of these two days?
• we remember everything that Hitler did, we remember Stalin’s body count, so why do we (western countries - predominantly the Allies) ignore the atrocities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which were of our own creation?
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Good topic. Does Japan recognize a day of rememberance for these? The number of lives lost instantly, let alone those dying after due to radiation, it's staggering. I can see why the US would rather forget, but its important to remember history. It's unfathomable when you really consider how many people died.
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exactly! the genocide they committed is widely ignored and they definitely haven’t acknowledged their war crimes as a nation. it’s a shame
Em
Agreed, I believe the death toll caused by Japan during the war was 6 million, which is roughly the same number of Jews killed. People either don’t know or ignore the fact that Japan invaded other countries and killed millions under the guise of the war
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but not every country has done what was done in unit 731 or in the nazi concentration camps...some wrongs are worse.
Does Japan have a memorial day for Pearl Harbor?
gj
I haven't seen anything on that, but if they do that's about equal to what we do. Seems fair enough to me.
Al
I don’t believe so but they do heavily participate in the remembrance. A lot of them including their leaders come to Pearl Harbor during that time.
We should also remember that the second bombing wasn’t needed and was a show of power by the USA.
Jo
yeah
J
Yes of course there should have been. The U.S. and Japan attempted to negotiate for a long time until Japan starting refusing. It all could have been avoided, as can most wars. It's sad how it started and how it ended
Jo
I'm just saying that there should have been a different way to end it, I'm not saying that one option is better than the other. It's just how I feel about it. War is unnecessary and it costs many lives on both sides of the battlefield. That's all I'm saying ig.
Japan do already have a day of remembrance for the bombings. Japan invaded China etc during WWII using allegiance with Hilter as an excuse and murdered 6 million Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, Filipinos and Indochinese, which is roughly equal to the amount of Jews killed during the war. But no one ever seems to mention that when discussing the war? It was absolutely horrific that civilians were bombed but whenever this comes up, seems to miss out the reason why they were bombed- to send a warning to Japan to stop their invasion and killings. I live in a country which was occupied by the Germans during WWII and thought I knew a lot about the war (it’s taught in schools and we have memorials etc) but it wasn’t until I went to the war museum in Caen in France that I was even aware of the involvement of Japan.
J
Yes. Also the torture and experimentation
Your last question answers your question. I don’t think the United States wants to remember something like that because we caused it. I think many Americans believed that was done for the greater good no matter the cost. The US doesn’t want to be known for causing so much bodily harm to people, but for saving people from others
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I’m not saying I don’t agree with the bombings, just that I don’t think the United States wants to remember that day
Em
The Japanese actually murdered 6 million people under the guise of the war. Yes the bombing was horrific and I don’t agree with the killing of civilians but there was a reason for the bombings, which lots of people don’t seem to realise and/or know about
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