The Nuking of Japan

[Shell B]

I agree with Creed of Heresy. You are looking at the whole thing from the American perspective.

That's an interesting take on my argument. "America did the wrong thing!" response: "You're being so American." What the . . . ?

But Japan's conquests of many Asian countries caused untold sufferings to the people there.

Irrelevant, unless you look at the nukes as a buddy revenge thing.

The Japanese were noted for their cruelty and they massacred a lot of civilians in Asia, eg the Nanking Massacre.

Still irrelevant, but I'll take the bait. I know Japan was doing horrible things. We didn't drop bombs on Japan to stop them from massacring people.

For us in the West, it was ok but the A-bombs ended the mass slaughters of Asians by the Japs.

Japs, dude? *facefuckingpalm* At any rate, you are talking about the Sino-Japanese Wars and looking at it from a popular media perspective. Not taking their other conflicts into account, let's just look at the years where World War II overlapped with the second Sino-Japanese War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_...r_II#China

Yes, it's unfortunate that Japanese civilians had to die but if it's a question who should die, I'd rather the death of the civilians of the aggressor country.

I'm sure you would. I would rather not see my countrymen die, but I don't want to see anyone who is innocent die. We burnt people who were doing nothing wrong alive. We burned their clothing onto their bodies. We completely leveled two cities with as many bombs. I use the term "we" loosely. We didn't do anything.

I've read accounts of British prisoners of war in Japanese concentration camps and how many more would have died if the saviour A-bombs had been dropped even a month later.

Have you read accounts of how the Allies treated prisoners of war? Probably not. Those aren't very pretty, either. Have you read about how we put our own countrymen in camps that were little better than work camps because their eyes were a bit slanty?

Interestingly, unlike Germany, Japan remains unrepentant.

Oh, please. All the giggly Japanese girls over here taking pictures of everything they see don't need to be repentant. Japan has taken leaps forward and is a good ally.

They have re-written history books for Japanese kids which claim that they were liberating Asia from British rule.

What country doesn't do that? I was taught that the Native Americans were scalping savages when I was in middle school. Of course, I was taught that they cooked turkey in elementary school.

And to this day, they have shrines in Yasukuni where they worship and honour the memory of even Class A war criminals.

Some would say we have had some pretty major war criminals in our midst. I would say the forced interment of American citizens for being "Japs" is a war crime.

Imagine if Germany had a shrine to worship Hitler and the other Nazi criminals.

I'm sure some of them do.

Whenever there are disagreements between Japan and other Asian countries, Japanese leaders will make a show of going to Yasukuni to worship the war criminals. That's how unrepentant Japan is.

What is the point about caring if they are repentant? You didn't say you're sorry, so it's totally cool that I dropped two nuclear bombs on you? What kind of logic is this?

I understand that it is human nature to try to excuse transgressions. The very reason that people try to excuse the nukes is the reason that Japan tries to excuse the war crimes. No one likes feeling uncomfortable about their nation's actions. People like pride more than shame. It's all perfectly explainable on both sides.