Author Topic: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?  (Read 3332 times)

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rangerrebew

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Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« on: August 11, 2015, 01:05:29 am »

Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?


By Palash Ghosh @Gooch700   on August 05 2011 2:23 PM EDT

 
Saturday marks the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima – devastating acts that helped bring World War Two to a close. (Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was similarly battered).

The attacks – the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in world history to date – killed tens of thousands of people and shocked the planet with the scale of their destruction.

There has been much controversy over the decision to bomb Japan and some speculation that it might have been racially motivated (given that the U.S. military did not drop such weapons on European civilian targets).

Anti-Japanese discrimination was widespread in the United States long before the war, as exemplified by immigration restrictions the government imposed upon the Japanese (as well as other Asians).

However, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by the Imperial Japanese military threw that animosity into overdrive that lasted well after the second world war.

About 120,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up into internment camps during the war, while propaganda was mass- produced that depicted the Japanese as subhuman and extremely cruel and depraved.

Admiral William F. Halsey told a news conference in 1944 that "the only good Jap is a Jap who's been dead for six months."

However, it must be noted that America’s principal enemy in the war, Germany, had surrendered three months prior to these bombings and the first successful test of the weapons occurred in July 1945 (two months after Germany surrendered).

Also, it should be noted that U.S. and allied bombs killed tens of thousands of German civilians during the final stretch of the war, particularly in cities like Dresden, which were practically obliterated off the map.

Major Myron L. Hampton refuted the notion that the decision to bomb Japan was racist in a document he wrote entitled ‘Racism and the Atomic Bomb’ in 1990.

“The effects of the bombing raids on Hamburg and Dresden were just as devastating as the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Hampton wrote.

“The destruction of the cities and the numbers of people killed were comparable. The shocking factor was that one bomb caused the destruction in Japan, whereas in Europe, continuous bombing raids and multiple assets were used.”

Hampton conceded that Japanese-Americans were treated far worse than their German and Italian counterparts during the war and before.

“There is no doubt that the Japanese and everything that reminded the American public of Japan was greatly despised,” he wrote.

“[The] Japanese were considered to be less than human. Although racial discrimination was blatant, the fact still remains that the United States was equally committed to defeating both enemies and with Winston Churchill's urging, had established a ‘defeat Europe’ first policy. If the atomic bomb had been available prior to the surrender of Germany, it would have been used in Europe, with the blessing of both England and Russia.”

In addition, after Germany had surrendered, the U.S. issued Japan an ultimatum to follow suit – Tokyo refused and kept fighting on.

U.S. President Harry Truman, who must take ultimate responsibility for the atomic bombing, said his reasoning was that by taking such drastic actions against Japan, the war would have been shortened, and countless more lives would have been saved.

Indeed, at the time much of the world reacted favorably to the US bombing of Japan – much relieved after six years of a murderous global war.

Still, the nagging questions that remain – would the U.S. have unleashed atomic weapons against white Europeans – can never really be answered.

http://www.ibtimes.com/were-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-racist-acts-824867
« Last Edit: August 11, 2015, 01:06:06 am by rangerrebew »

Offline EdinVA

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2015, 01:24:59 am »
Quote
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, estimates that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3 to over 10 million people, most likely 6 million Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. According to Rummel, "This democide [i.e., death by government] was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[59] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937–45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 million in the course of the war.[60] The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937–38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[61]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

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Offline PzLdr

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2015, 04:58:23 pm »
Was Pearl Harbor?
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Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2015, 05:21:45 pm »
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were humanitarian acts, saving thousands and thousands of lives, on both sides.

Truman is a great figure in history, for his courage and the lives he saved.
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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #4 on: August 11, 2015, 05:21:55 pm »
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Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?

No they were not. They were simply the best available method of putting an end to the war and their application actually saved lives on BOTH sides!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #5 on: August 11, 2015, 05:23:52 pm »
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were humanitarian acts, saving thousands and thousands of lives, on both sides.

Truman is a great figure in history, for his courage and the lives he saved.

Which is unfortunate because outside to giving that order Harry S. Truman was a TERRIBLE president!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #6 on: August 11, 2015, 05:33:35 pm »
Which is unfortunate because outside to giving that order Harry S. Truman was a TERRIBLE president!
What is unfortunate about doing the right thing, and earning credit for it?

Is your political partisanship incapable of giving credit where due?

Americans elected FDR 4 times, and reelected Truman next. One reason was the distance that conservatism of those days had gone away from mainstream Americans and their concerns.

"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #7 on: August 11, 2015, 05:36:44 pm »
What is unfortunate about doing the right thing, and earning credit for it?

Is your political partisanship incapable of giving credit where due?

Americans elected FDR 4 times, and reelected Truman next. One reason was the distance that conservatism of those days had gone away from mainstream Americans and their concerns.

I DO give him credit were it is due! It took courage to issue the order to use those bombs and I acknowledge that freely! Outside of that decision he was a terrible president!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline EC

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #8 on: August 11, 2015, 05:50:53 pm »
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About 120,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up into internment camps during the war, while propaganda was mass- produced that depicted the Japanese as subhuman and extremely cruel and depraved.

Weren't propaganda. Unless propaganda is speaking the truth now.
One of my teachers back in school had been a Japanese POW during the war. He was missing an ear and used to lock himself in his office sometimes during class. We'd just get the work from the board and get on with it quietly - never played up with him at all.
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bkepley

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #9 on: August 11, 2015, 05:56:24 pm »
I DO give him credit were it is due! It took courage to issue the order to use those bombs and I acknowledge that freely! Outside of that decision he was a terrible president!

You must be in the minority opinion on that because he was re-elected.  Truly terrible presidents such as Carter are not re-elected.
Just my opinion also.

Offline EC

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #10 on: August 11, 2015, 06:08:17 pm »
Truly terrible presidents such as Carter are not re-elected.
Just my opinion also.

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bkepley

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #11 on: August 11, 2015, 06:10:26 pm »
Obama

Well there is an exception for every rule of course and everyone knows why Obama was elected and re-elected and it wasn't his greatness as a president.

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #12 on: August 11, 2015, 06:12:33 pm »
Well we didn't bomb them because they were the Blind Sisters of Perpetual Mercy, but did we bomb them because they were a different race? It was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy since the Jap culture produced an unrelenting enemy that needed to be thoroughly dominated to give up. Europe by comparison was going far easier.

So yes we did it specifically toward the Japs, but only because we saw no other way to avoid that level of casualties on both sides. We simply didn't have that issue with Italy or Germany, so it's a question that can't be really answered.
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Offline Rivergirl

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #13 on: August 11, 2015, 06:16:01 pm »
Were the Japanese racist when they invaded China?
Were the Japanese racist when the bombed Pearl Harbor?

bkepley

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2015, 06:18:03 pm »
Were the Japanese racist when they invaded China?
Were the Japanese racist when the bombed Pearl Harbor?

Yes and yes.

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #15 on: August 11, 2015, 09:33:51 pm »
Were the Japanese racist when they invaded China?
Were the Japanese racist when the bombed Pearl Harbor?
I once had a very good client that was an expatriate businessman from Japan. He served in their military during WWII, as a translator for American POWs.

He was living in the US. He stated the Japanese were VERY racist, feeling themselves superior to all others. In particular, superior to Koreans and Chinese.
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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #16 on: August 12, 2015, 02:11:44 am »
EC wrote above (about Japanese conduct during WWII):
[[ Weren't propaganda. Unless propaganda is speaking the truth now. ]]

Agreed.

My uncle was in the Bataan death march.
He survived and years later was invited back to the Philippines with other survivors.

I think the barbarity of isis today has more in common with the Japanese back then, than with the Germans...

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #17 on: August 12, 2015, 02:14:32 am »
EC wrote above (about Japanese conduct during WWII):
[[ Weren't propaganda. Unless propaganda is speaking the truth now. ]]

Agreed.

My uncle was in the Bataan death march.
He survived and years later was invited back to the Philippines with other survivors.

I think the barbarity of isis today has more in common with the Japanese back then, than with the Germans...

Isn't that something! My CO in Vietnam was a survivor of that incident as well! Did not speak well of his captors at all!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline PzLdr

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #18 on: August 12, 2015, 04:01:02 am »
Well we didn't bomb them because they were the Blind Sisters of Perpetual Mercy, but did we bomb them because they were a different race? It was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy since the Jap culture produced an unrelenting enemy that needed to be thoroughly dominated to give up. Europe by comparison was going far easier.

So yes we did it specifically toward the Japs, but only because we saw no other way to avoid that level of casualties on both sides. We simply didn't have that issue with Italy or Germany, so it's a question that can't be really answered.

We also didn't have the bomb ready before Germany surrendered.
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Offline PzLdr

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #19 on: August 12, 2015, 04:08:13 am »
EC wrote above (about Japanese conduct during WWII):
[[ Weren't propaganda. Unless propaganda is speaking the truth now. ]]

Agreed.

My uncle was in the Bataan death march.
He survived and years later was invited back to the Philippines with other survivors.

I think the barbarity of isis today has more in common with the Japanese back then, than with the Germans...

As far as Westerners were concerned, the Japanese were MUCH worse. The death rate of American POWs in German hands was something like 3-4% [the average holds true for the British, Commonwealth and other Western troops]. The death rate of American POWs in Japanese hands was some 37-40% [same applies for other Westerners]. And the Japanese did things to prisoners that the Germans only did, as a general rule, in Eastern Europe, the USSR and Southeastern Europe. The closest the Germans came to the Rape of Nanking were the Warsaw Ghetto, Babi Yar, and the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
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Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Racist Acts?
« Reply #20 on: August 12, 2015, 05:39:17 am »
Sadly, I think that they may have in fact been racist acts.

There wasn't a single African-American in either crew.

Next time we nuke some deserving a$$holes into submission, we should make sure to include an African-American or two in the bomber's crews.

That and maybe a Mexican and some guy named Nakamura for extra added PC precautions,
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