Japan on Sunday commemorated the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the final phase of World War II.
Considering the growing nuclear threat worldwide, the mayor of Hiroshima Kazumi Matsui called for the abolition of nuclear weapons and described the nuclear deterrence policy of G7 as “folly.”
“They must immediately take concrete steps to move us from the dangerous present to our ideal world,” he said as a peace bell rang on Sunday at 8:15 a.m. — exactly when on August 6, 1945, US bomber Enola Gay set off the world’s first atomic bomb dropped on a population center.
This year, the G7 summit took place in Hiroshima, which happens to be Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s home constituency
“Leaders around the world must confront the reality that nuclear threats now being voiced by certain policymakers reveal the folly of nuclear deterrence theory,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said at the ceremony which was also attended by Kishida.
At the memorial ceremony about 50,000 people, including aging victims who survived the bombing, gathered and observed a moment of silence.
Drums of nuclear war beating again: Antonio Guterres
The anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing was commemorated amid the growing threat of nuclear weapons propelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The issue poses a tricky balancing act for Kishida. Japan is traditionally an advocate of nuclear disarmament, in no small part because of the legacy of the attacks on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki three days later.
However, it also supports the partly nuclear-armed G7’s group stance that members with atomic weapons shall retain them for as long as they’re a necessary deterrent against other nuclear powers.
“World leaders have visited this city, seen its monuments, spoken with its brave survivors, and emerged emboldened to take up the cause of nuclear disarmament,” he said in remarks read by a UN representative. “More should do so, because the drums of nuclear war are beating once again.”
The American atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima was nicknamed “Little Boy.” It is thought to have killed as many as 140,000 people by the end of 1945. Three days later, the US dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. It is believed to have killed up to 70,000 over the next four months.
A few days after the bombings, on August 15, Japan made an official announcement that it was surrendering. Soon after, on September 2, Japan formally capitulated, bringing an end to World War II in Asia.
Whether using the bombs brought about a speedier, and possibly even more bloodless, end to the war or whether it was an ultimately unnecessary show of force remains a fierce debate among historians almost eight decades on
It was ww2, the whole thing started with Nanking, then battle of Britain, the nasty shit in the Philippines, the Eastern front, all of it, dresden, then the firebombing of half of Japan.
So yeah, but calling warcrime in ww2 is a bit like calling offsides in a preschool soccer match.
Yeah. WW2 is a big part of WHY we have the concept of “war crimes” because of the evil done by everyone to everyone else. How much any given country acknowledges their evil varies (Germany probably came out the “best” because they refuse to let their people forget… Japan… has gone through a few political cycles), but everyone did horrific shit.
The US is just kind of unique in that we almost take pride in two particularly heinous acts (although, relative to what else was going on… it is real fucked up that nukes are a drop in the bucket). And while the “justification” of their use is massively complicated (complete with a LOT of revisionist history on all parties), it can’t be denied that they pretty much kept the global north from engaging in many direct wars all the way up to today. As for the global south… yeah.
But yeah. Anyone who has the opportunity needs to take a trip to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and museum. It is a REALLY hard day (and has a lot of that propaganda I alluded to) but the firsthand accounts and pictures are something anyone alive needs to see.
(and almost 20 more when general MacArthur wanted to nuke China in 1950)
I don’t get the “needed to” argument. They could have chosen military targets, but went straight for cities.
Went into this below but that is mostly a myth/narrative related to a “good war” coupled with remnants of the idea that these are warriors/knights fighting.
The reality is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki WERE “military” targets in the sense that they were industrial centers. They weren’t where all the troops were stationed. They WERE where all the troops got their guns and equipment from (I forget exactly what the factories were set up to build but it was military supplies). Which was particularly important as Japan was largely on its last legs. Their navy and air force were mostly in tatters and they were frantically trying to rebuild before the Allies defeated them.
And, as mentioned below, these weren’t armies made up of professional soldiers. They weren’t even armies made up of dumbass kids who got tricked into signing paperwork. Every (?) military in WW2 was built around drafted civilians. Maybe peer pressure made you pretend you wanted to go overseas and fight some “Japoteurs” but the reality is that you were sent a letter in the mail saying “get your ass to this bus station or we will arrest you”. The difference between someone sitting in downtown Hiroshima and in a military base in Tokyo mostly boiled down to luck of the draft lottery (and Japan was in the process of MASSIVELY increasing the “eligibility” for the draft).
Which is the true horror of war. It isn’t about two big burly men fighting until one of them has had enough and yields. It is about forcing your enemy to capitulate. That means taking away their ability to fight AND their will to fight. Kill enough soldiers and the morale “back home” breaks down (The US in Vietnam is the quintessential example). Take away their weapons and they are forced to conserve resources and are unable to fight. Destroy their food supplies and they starve. But it is the “civilians” who are suffering because they are losing their family every time you kill a soldier. They are dying in the factories when you bomb them. They are starving a lot sooner than the frontline troops are. And that is also contributing to morale.
Which gets back to what a mess all of this is. Because nobody with even an iota of humanity thinks the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “deserved” this (and I say this as someone whose family directly suffered because of Imperial Japan’s atrocities in China). And, again, at the very least people need to read those accounts. Hearing about children basically having their skin melted off by black rain is horrifying. But what people fail to do is read up about people being raped and tortured by the invading soldiers when “military cities” are attacked. They fail to read up about all the civilians in the logistics train who get killed when “military targets” are attacked. And they are indoctrinated enough into propaganda that they don’t really think about the distinction between dying in bed at home versus dying in bed in a barracks when a five hundred pound bomb is dropped on you. Because people are so fixated on the idea that you lose all right to live the moment your government says “Here is a gun. You can either kill the enemy or go to prison. Also, we might just execute you on the spot rather than deal with shipping you to a jail cell. Remember, your enemies are Other”
But also? Go drive around the nearest military base to where you live. If it is an air force base, there is a good chance it is literally next door to a civilian airport (partially for weather and flight path reasons). Regardless, there are probably a lot of businesses, apartment complexes, hospitals, etc. Because most military bases are small cities unto themselves… and because it ensures that blowing up a military target still has civilian casualties which, if handled correctly, can be spun as indiscriminate murder of civilians and a reason to keep fighting.
To quote Sartre, “When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die”. And while it is important to try to minimize civilian casualties, it is also important to understand… civilian casualties are the point.
And just to contrast this a bit with some OTHER war crimes the US Military did. One of our favorite tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq and all the other fun places we go to murder brown people is to take out “high value targets”. Fire a hellfire missile into someone’s bedroom. Oops, we missed and killed the family next door. Oh well, the people are still demoralized so a win’s a win. Or maybe we didn’t miss and STILL killed the family next door!
My personal ethics regarding this? I think all of this is evil and even the “good” wars like WW2 (saving the victims of the Holocaust and the victims of Imperial Japan) are mostly a case of realizing after the fact that we had a justification for some of the war crimes we did (and if you never want to sleep again? Go read up on what Russia and the US did to the Korean and Chinese victims of Imperial Japan. I’ll give you a hint: White folk are REALLY bad at giving a shit about why your eyes are slanted but they are REALLY good about taking out some aggression on the people they were brainwashed into hating).
They went for very military industrial complex cities as possible. There was no purely miltrry target big enough. But is it worse than the fire/bombing that went on against many cities in the war (e.g. Dresden, Tokyo, Coventry, London west end and mamy many more.)
Big enough for what though? Big enough to take advantage of the amount of destruction these weapons create? They could have chosen a single isolated, near coast warship. Or even just dropped it near coast on no target at all. The important thing would have been the show of force, in order to deter further attack. Knowing the US had that capability might have been enough to end the war. But we didn’t try to communicate that we had these weapons, instead we used them.
We baleeted 2 cities to prove there was literally 0 point in fighting, we could eliminate Tokyo, remove it from the earth at will.
They still wanted to keep fighting.
I think you’re applying a level of rationality to them that was not there, even after the war, there are testimonies from Japanese leaders where they simply did not believe they could lose because they were destined to win under heaven.
They knew Americans couldn’t take the islands, they were too squeamish and couldn’t stand to lose that much blood, so Japan would remain no matter what.
Removing cities finally convinced them they were completely outclassed and there was no point even trying to fight.
The problem is this is an argument of what ifs. Who knows if Japan would have reconsidered if the US had performed a public demonstration, or even just made the trinity test public before dropping Hiroshima, so the Japanese knew what was coming if they didn’t surrender. Maybe it would have done something, maybe it wouldn’t. We’ll never know for sure, and all this arguing about the collective psychology of a large nation 100 years ago is never going to reach a point of agreement.
We know what they were thinking even after we ctrl-x’d 2 cities, they were going to fight on and there was an attempted coup to do so.
After the first bomb they had experts swear America couldn’t have any more than 1 bomb.
Edit: I wasn’t saying anything about the bombing below only that if we had invaded the islands lots of American GIs would have died. Glad it didn’t happen for whatever reason(s).
My grandpa went into the US Army in 1939 and not due to Pearl Harbor. As Europe wound down they started setting up who would invade and how many would die when we invaded the Japanese home islands. I probably wouldn’t be here if that happened.
I recall reading but now can’t find it that the body bags manufactured for this invasion and then not used are the ones that were used for Korea, Vietnam, and even more recent.
I strongly encourage doing a bit of research on the bombings.
The traditional American and UK (once we gave them the tech) stance is “We had no choice. We needed to strike decisively to prevent a bloody invasion. The Japanese were fighting to the last man in every other battle”. The (modern) Japanese stance largely being “The war was already over and America just wanted to show off to Russia” with generally no reference to WHY Imperial Japan was the kind of nation that people would be able to sell unleashing literal hell on.
The reality is obviously very murky with a lot of revisionist history and many of the common statements like “Even Eisenhower was opposed to it” ignoring why military commanders would be opposed to “technology” potentially taking the “glory” of winning the war away from them. But basically all historians agree the war was largely “over” by that point. Japan was the last major power of the Axis that was still standing and their air force and navy were in tatters. There likely would have been a ground invasion (or excessive coastal shelling) but it mostly becomes a question of whether more civilians and conscripted soldiers would have died than the number of civilians (and conscripted soldiers) who died in the bombings.
But Americans do like to point out that fewer Americans died through the use of atomic bombs. Which… maybe isn’t the best answer to “we did two of the most historic war crimes in human history”
One thing which has always deeply bothered me is that the argument is generally that more soldiers would have died than civilians if we had done the land invasion. Which is true. But it ignores two key aspects
Again, I am not justifying this. I believe the use of nuclear weapons is the kind of sin that stains a nation forever. I also feel that way about most things done in war. But people should understand the circumstances and the arguments for and against it.
Edited mine above as I don’t think that I did a good job of highlighting my sidebar to note the invasion didn’t happen for whatever reason(s) of which I’m thankful.
If you think Us gave UK the tech during ww2 then I question your research. The UK had independent research with “tube alloys” following the Frisch peierls memo from university of Birmingham (the original UK one not Alabama)
The UK pushed the us to use its industrial might to followup their work on uranium. The Brits were leaders on explosive lens (albeit from work of an eventual soviet traitor) among others. Los Alamos was a collaboration of UK, Canada and US plus a few other allies. The UK then used "what they learnt " at Los Alamos to carry out their “high explosives” project while locked out in late 40s early 50s and only once they showed independant build of a thermonuclear (fison fusion) bomb in 52 were they allowed back in the 1952 mutual defence agreement.
Stop right there. If the war was ‘already over’, then why didn’t Japan surrender until after being nuked?
I heard they were still.using those bags for the Iraq/afrghan wars of 2000s
Also the purple hearts and some other medals we built and didn’t need.
Believe it or not, the US nuked Japan to save lives. The other option was a direct invasion of the mainland which both sides expected to be a bloodbath.
I’ll have sympathy for japan when they have a memorial day for all the people they experimented on during WW2. Funny how they don’t seem to care much about that.
There are counties still paying today consequences of war crime sanctions of ww2