Interesting post. I was unaware of this “random attack” teaching. Is this present day curriculum? Japan isn’t closed off to Western internet and media. It can’t be that close of a secret, I mean they’re watching Oppenheimer right now. Not like China where they lose you in a prison colony if you talk about certain historical facts and the internet and media are fully censored.
I’m reminded of the Japanese guy who remained encamped on some spit of jungle in the Pacific Islands until something bananas like 1975 or something, and he had been out there with two others still holding their position, and had shot like 15 locals. Even when NGOs brought them newspapers, they assumed it was an American trick because they were taught and still believed that Japan would never surrender and would die fighting door to door to the last. It must have seemed paradoxical to them. They had to bring back the guy’s commanding officer fom a retirement home or something and fly him to the island to get the guys to come out. As far as I understand, that sort of rhetoric is viewed in Japan how anti semitic rhetoric is viewed by most Germans.
Personally I think those two bombs saved a lot of lives by destroying Japan’s will to continue prosecuting the war, and two showed restraint that the world has continued to this day. As I understand, some in America argued for more targets, like as many as 50(?) cities? If that had happened, Japan wasn’t going to be any more beaten than if they lost the will to fight and surrendered unconditionally after just two bombs, and I wonder what might have happened if that tradition of restraint didn’t exist all these years. You know, if it had been fifty, sometime by now some despot would have been saying “what’s the big deal, not like we did fifty.”
Interesting post. I was unaware of this “random attack” teaching. Is this present day curriculum? Japan isn’t closed off to Western internet and media. It can’t be that close of a secret, I mean they’re watching Oppenheimer right now. Not like China where they lose you in a prison colony if you talk about certain historical facts and the internet and media are fully censored.
I’m reminded of the Japanese guy who remained encamped on some spit of jungle in the Pacific Islands until something bananas like 1975 or something, and he had been out there with two others still holding their position, and had shot like 15 locals. Even when NGOs brought them newspapers, they assumed it was an American trick because they were taught and still believed that Japan would never surrender and would die fighting door to door to the last. It must have seemed paradoxical to them. They had to bring back the guy’s commanding officer fom a retirement home or something and fly him to the island to get the guys to come out. As far as I understand, that sort of rhetoric is viewed in Japan how anti semitic rhetoric is viewed by most Germans.
Personally I think those two bombs saved a lot of lives by destroying Japan’s will to continue prosecuting the war, and two showed restraint that the world has continued to this day. As I understand, some in America argued for more targets, like as many as 50(?) cities? If that had happened, Japan wasn’t going to be any more beaten than if they lost the will to fight and surrendered unconditionally after just two bombs, and I wonder what might have happened if that tradition of restraint didn’t exist all these years. You know, if it had been fifty, sometime by now some despot would have been saying “what’s the big deal, not like we did fifty.”