Film about ‘father of the atomic bomb’ finally opens in Japan after being delayed by outrage at ‘Barbenheimer’ memes
Archived version: https://archive.ph/8vjF7
Twice as many Japanese would have died had we invaded.
Those weren’t the only choices.
The bomb could have been used on a military target rather than an overwhelmingly civillian population.
Those weren’t the only choices
True, if you don’t know about it, look up the bat bomb.
Actually, the Japanese were already trying to find a way to surrender at the time. The Soviet Union invading would’ve been the last straw, the US was trying to get in a bomb first because they didn’t want the Soviet Union to have a victory. And to them, that was worth hundreds of thousands of lives.
And so many allies
Did the journalist need to submit an article before the end of the week and dug this up from their rough draft folder?
Article is a bit click-baity. Many of the survivors who saw the film were okay with its depiction and understood why the film presented the atomic bombings the way that it did. The film is ultimately about J. Robert Oppenheimer, and showing the physical outcome of the bombings would have itself been a potentially crass and shocking inclusion in a relatively subdued character study of a complex and tortured individual. Everyone knows that the physical outcome of the bombings on Hiroshima are shocking and terrible and left a lasting scar on the nation, coming to define the national identity of the Japanese, and especially Hiroshima natives that survived the blast, throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. But it’s sort of like The Wind Rises. Oppenheimer was a physicist, and a very talented one. That his work contributed to the horrors of war is part of the tragedy of the individual and their story, just like it was for Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Zero.
The Guardian does seem to be getting a bit more clickbaity lately.
It’s the one thing I think the movie totally dropped the ball on. There was an opportunity to show what happened in Hiroshima, and Chris didn’t take it.
After seeing Oppenheimer I started reading Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya, it’s pretty harrowing stuff. And I was already aware through other cultural osmosis/research what conditions on the ground were like after the bomb. What a wasted opportunity.
That’s probably why the movie was titled Oppenheimer and not Hiroshima & Nagasaki, because the movie was focused on the man and his work and the regrets that came from that work, while nations celebrated the end of a second World War.
This movie was the type of movie that was always going to upset someone, and while it sucks that Japanese citizens were killed, their emperor’s military might was a brutally murderous raping scourge set loose on that section of the world, while also working with some of the other worst regimes of the world. Overall Japan fucked around and attacked first, did a lot of horrible shit to many different peoples, made some truly horrible friends, and then found out in one of the most devastating ways possible, I feel bad for the innocent civilians, but it was always ever going to end the way it did, if not a lot worse.
I’m just glad Japan grew to be what it is now and that it chose better ways to engage with the world than more attempts at domination, even though Anime, Manga, and more have dominated the world’s hearts.
Few people know about the barbaric shit the Japanese did during WW2. Some really… Really fucked up shit.
Bruh, Unit 731 is a meme at this point.
Lions lead by donkeys podcast has an episode about that, it and a few other episodes has the following trigger warning:
“Everything”
Which is apt.
Unit 731 - It is worse than you think, and keeps getting worse.
I’ve never had to stop reading a Wikipedia page before I read about that shit.
but it was always ever going to end the way it did, if not a lot worse.
This takeaway is mythologization of America’s most reprehensible act.
We murdered 210,000 civilians because of a perceived threat to capitalism.
Every Purple Heart that has been given out since WW2 all come from a surplus we made in preparation for a land invasion of Japan. Think about that. Had the bombs not worked, our own estimates put the casualties at hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Just US soldiers. Not even counting Japanese soldiers or civilian lives. I don’t think the Soviets would have had a magical method to invade without similar casualties.
Were the bombs the right move? I don’t know. It was almost 80 years ago in a complicated time that none of us discussing it now can fully understand. I think it’s telling that Japan surrendered shortly after. I also think it’s telling that no nuclear weapon has been used in combat since then. But based solely on our estimates of what a land invasion, either by the US or the Soviets, would cost in terms of lives lost, I do think it’s a fair argument to say the bombs wound up costing less.
It’s like you didn’t read either of the articles I linked to.
Also saying they were used in combat, when the targets were specifically none military, is a gross misuse of the word.
I don’t think the Soviets would have had a magical method to invade without similar casualties.
The USSR could invade Japan from the less populated and lightly defended north and northwest, while the US would have to invade from the heavily populated and well-defended south and east. This might have helped, but of course we can’t say anything for sure.
While I’m not defending the use of the bombs as bargaining chips, Japan would have suffered the same fate as Germany under Soviet rule. North Japan and South Japan, alongside a Tokyo Wall, would have not been just a “threat to capitalism”.
So it’s better to melt the faces off of hundreds of thousands of innocent people than to risk a two state solution?
They weren’t innocent, they were willing and eager subjects of a fascist state that had killed over 20 million Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos amongst others, and there was never a chance of it being two state solution.
If there’s a reason Truman dropped the bomb as an anti-communist measure it was to just to irredeemably prove we had them and it wasn’t propaganda.
In the real world, however, Imperial Japan was an irrational state that was trying to force a conditional surrender in a war the leaders never thought they could win in the first place.
The USA waited three days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a surrender. It didn’t happen. That alone proves there wasn’t one coming from other circumstances.
Are you a willing and eager subject to the current genocide being funded with your taxpayer dollars?
No, and unlike your bitch ass I’ve been tear gassed to prove it.
Fortunately, we can rest assured that the vast majority of Japanese citizens supported the war. Not only were are they as a people still largely unrepentant, we know what happened to the people who did resist:
They were killed or shipped to Korea as slaves.
Your comment in “‘There wasn’t enough about the horror’: Hiroshima survivors react to Oppenheimer” was removed from [email protected].
Reason: Rule 3 - Respectful Communication.So you acknowledge that public dissent had violent repercussions, but that somehow equates that all civilians were willing supporters and valid targets? That’s an amazing display of doublethink. Paired with the ad hominem, you’ve shown yourself completely impotent.
They weren’t innocent, they were willing and eager subjects
Just no. Tens of thousands of those killed were children and babies.
Massacring civillians using the excuse that they “all” are collectively responsible for their leadership is a war crime. You’re in very bad company. Osama Bin Laden explicitly used that same excuse for 9/11. Israel is using it now for Gaza.
In the documentary Fog of War McNamara admits that him and Curtis May were essentially behaving as war criminals.
There’s absolutely no reason to try to carve out this weird moral exception for the US in its slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civillians at Hiroshima and Nagisaki.
There is no shame in learning from the mistakes of the past.
“They” were civilians. You may have had a point if they nuked strictly military targets, but they didn’t, they nuked two major civilian centers and they placed the epicenter of the blast in such a position so as to cause maximum carnage.
Any argument that it was anti Soviet (and that that makes it acceptable somehow) or that it was necessary is just atrocity apologia.
What do you think the 20 million victims of Imperial Japan were?
Who do you think invented the concept of total war?
Who do you think initially agreed to abide by the Geneva Conventions and then immediately betrayed them?
How many civilians do you think would have died in a ground invasion?
Don’t want to get your people bombed, don’t start bombing people. You want to feel sad for the loss of people trapped by environmental circumstance in more than one way, knock yourself out, but their blood was on Hirohito and his government’s hands the moment their dumbasses decided to invade their “subhuman” neighbors.
So they deserved it, because their government did terrible things.
You understand that they lived under immense propaganda. Right? They deserved it just as much as the people of East Asia deserved the atrocities committed against them by the Japanese Imperial military.
Would you support nuking Moscow, Jerusalem, or DC? Why not?
It’s true. We could have proven the existence of the bombs without killing anyone.
Perhaps what we were proving was our own brutality though.
NPR played an interview with a survivor.
He said that he hoped people in Japan would watch Oppenheimer and see the excitement when the nuclear bomb testing succeeded. He felt that it showed the American point of view and that a bomb was their ticket out of a terrible war with Japan.
He also said we should discuss these things now because by the time the century anniversary comes there will be none of “us” left.
I heard there was a plot to stop the emperor from surrendering, despite the massive devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would’ve taken 10x as many losses from air raids and ground battles for them to concede.
It’s interesting how differently survivors of an event feel when compared to people who only ever learned about the event through history.
Yeah.
And the whole horror of the bombs devastation wasn’t truly realised until much later, and acknowledged, in the US? Quite a lot later, probably.
We’re watching it from Oppenheimer’s pov essentially, it’s not a documentary.
Switched strats to focus on a culture victory.
Something is most keenly felt in its absence
I’ll care when Japan stops pretending to be a victim of WW2, makes actual good faith attempts to return looted artifacts from their colonies, and admits at least some* of the “comfort women” were slaves.
Lol everytime I go on Lemmy and suggest that your nation returns my nation’s looted treasures, you guys say “see no cause they’re safer with me, your country is a shit hole” and you still to this day ignore all the atrocities you guys committed against us. Don’t try to tell me the people you nuked weren’t victims, just to avoid the reality that you guys did something so evil, and made it out to be a hero move
So you’d rather have twice as many die during the invasion that would have been needed for Japan to surrender without the bomb?
Nukes are the only reason Japan wasn’t wiped out entirely via invasion.
It’s nice when you develop entire what if scenarios after the fact, to justify your war crimes
That isn’t a “What If”, that was literally our plan if the bomb was not developed in time.
It’s tough to decide between which war crime to commit
Friend, Japan started that war and refused to surrender. The American people literally did not want to participate in that specific war.
The USA is really fucking good at killing people. Japan knew this and they still decided to attack.
Loss of civilian life is unavoidable when two countries initiate a full scale war. Does it suck to be on the losing end of that? Absolutely. Unfortunately, at the time, war consisted of bombing and ground warfare. Japan seemed to have no plans to leave the USA alone so the American hand was forced to pick between the few very bad options. All of them would result in a dramatic loss of life.
By that logic, 9/11 was justified cause of what America did to Arabs. By your logic, when your country invaded mine without cause and killed my people, it would have been justified for me to murder you and every American
Curious, what do they teach you about Japanese involvement in WW2 in your (presumably Japan’s) education system?
The mothers and babies who were incinerated by American nukes weren’t involved. Wanna go after the Japanese Army or government? Go for it. Don’t murder babies and call it a good thing
Of course they were victims, but they were victims of their imperialist government at least as much as they were victims of the US if not more so. The Japanese military led an aggressive, savage campaign. They raped and brutalized with impunity. They tortured POWs with impunity. They carried out disgusting medical experiments and vivisections with zero humanity. Perhaps you are familiar with the rape of Nanking? Unit 731?
They sneak-attacked the US and pulled them into the war, and even after they were completely defeated they would. not. stop.
It’s a very complicated issue. Debate will go on forever about whether or not the US nuking Japan was the “right” choice. It will never end because it is based on hypotheticals about what might have happened in an alternate timeline, and what the true motivations behind it might have been.
One thing is very clear though: Japan’s government and their military were beat and they should have surrendered but they did not. Their military continued to operate their systematic campaign of torture and rape.
The US had atomic bombs and responded by using them. Was it the right thing to do? Who knows. Japan’s government fucked around, repeatedly, and their citizens found out.
Putting it all on the US is a level of cope beyond anything science could have imagined.
That’s interesting, do you ever get that about the treasure stolen and hoarded by the Japanese occupiers and soldiers from the Chinese and Korean people?
I recall that being a huge issue back on the early 2000’s without being addressed.
Yeah it’s a big issue when anyone steals artifacts. But I don’t want to hear from Americans about it. That’s like a serial killer complaining about another guy committing assault.
Man, that’s fucking legit, I feel you there
The movie was going to be difficult to get everyone to enjoy honestly. But I do think that last scene where he’s infront of all the people really is done well.
