Every spring, on the March 9th anniversary of the U.S. incendiary bombing of Tokyo which initially killed more people (civilians) than the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, nationalist right wing head-up-his-ass Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara bemoans the “atrocity” of that event. I suppose he is obliged to do so, considering his job, but he is also prone to do so considering his personality. I regularly ask what atrocity he is referring to? Is he referring to the atrocity of a war that Japan started in the first place? Or, is he referring to the atrocity of a war that Japan waged in a notoriously heinous and criminal fashion? Or, is he referring to the atrocity of a war that Japan stubbornly refused to give up long after its cause was lost? Because if it isn’t one of these, then I’m at a loss to understand him, and I suggest that he ought to return to school for some sincere education. (The Japanese are great fans of sincerity, especially fake sincerity as a social balm.) I make these queries in the form of letters-to-the-editor of Japanese newspapers as well as letters directly to the Governor’s office in Shinjuku. Of course, I get no action, because the suggestions in my questions are incongruous with the spirit of the memory that is being cultivated. Or manufactured?
2. Why it is framed that way.
Young Japanese people today feel just as remote from the Second World War as young North Americans do. For young people today the first Gulf War isn’t even a distant memory. Even so, ghosts of the Pacific War linger and are still cultivated here not only by the right-wingers who regularly patrol Tokyo streets in their black, military ensign-bedecked vans, blaring mawkish antique ballads and well as marital tunes. They are also cultivated by conservative-leaning school textbook publishers, by a creaking and largely geriatric, male political class puffed up with the vulnerabilities of male ego, and by an arch conservative ambient society in which no significant evolution has ever occurred that was not forced from the outside. Naturally governments take a much wider and longer-term view of matters than the general public. They do so for the sake of social policy, political strategy, and as a feature of cultural disposition. On such grounds it may always be asked just how much government actually reflects the contemporary population? Hmm ... it’s a persistent problem. Having said all of that, foreigners regularly observe how - among those Japanese who shape the discourse - those right wingers and textbook publishers and politicians - Japan and its people are still framed as “weak” in the world, and at a disadvantage to other nations and peoples and, consistently, as the victim rather than the victimizer of the Pacific War. I think it highlights one of the national features that we might say characterizes the Japanese - moral obtuseness. Yes, they are patient and longsuffering. Yes, they are hard working. Yes, they are law abiding and clean. Yes, they are ingenious imitators and sly, opportunistic innovators. But they are also quite morally obtuse. Moral obtuseness is what Governor Ishihara is demonstrating when he laments the “atrocity” of the March 9th Tokyo bombing every spring. Japanese don’t have a monopoly on that, of course. Most people are morally obtuse. But ...
We might accuse Americans who want to apologize for the Truman government’s decision to use atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945 as moral obtuseness as well. I think that much of the condemnation of the atomic weapons’ use is retroactive - people condemning them in light of subsequent understanding of radiation’s side effects, which doesn’t make the best argument. It might not help it at all, although it seems to sell well. My support for the bombings is in the spirit of the times in which they occurred: it was the quickest way to end the insane slaughter that Japan was responsible for bringing. Remember the three atrocities, that the Pacific War was 1) a war that it started in the first place; 2) a war that it waged in a heinous and criminal fashion; and, 3) a war that it refused to give it up long after its cause was lost. In other words, Japanese behavior forced the Americans’ hands. Thank goodness, too! President Truman was beloved for ending the war. Atomic weapons were weapons of peace, and they delivered. Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good. It is a common canard to hear the argument that a blockade of the Japanese home islands could have / would have brought a quick and more peaceful end to the conflict, or that an offshore demonstration of the weapons’ power would have motivated a Japanese surrender. The rank stupidity of both these propositions is pathetic. They reflect the common error of underestimating a people’s determination to suffer for what they think is right, regardless of the veracity of their convictions, which is beside the point. Both Cuba and North Korea are contemporary examples. Of course the regimes in North Korea and Cuba will fall and change eventually, just as the Japanese militarist government would have eventually fallen and changed without Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction. But none of it for the supposed reasons. I think America would have been blameless if it had used more atomic weapons - against Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and other major centers. What a terrible thing to say! But it’s true. It just happened that two weapons was the extent of its arsenal at the time. Lucky for Japan that it was, but considering how it waged its war arguments that it deserved annihilation were well received and entertained at the time. Only compassion and restraint - and a depleted atomic arsenal - stayed Washington’s hand, for which America deserves historic credit. First America defeated militarist Japan, and then it saved it. (Ironically, it seems that one of the best things for a country in the modern world is to be defeated by America.) So, let’s not neglect the celebration of V-J Day, August 15th.
Young Japanese people today feel just as remote from the Second World War as young North Americans do. For young people today the first Gulf War isn’t even a distant memory. Even so, ghosts of the Pacific War linger and are still cultivated here not only by the right-wingers who regularly patrol Tokyo streets in their black, military ensign-bedecked vans, blaring mawkish antique ballads and well as marital tunes. They are also cultivated by conservative-leaning school textbook publishers, by a creaking and largely geriatric, male political class puffed up with the vulnerabilities of male ego, and by an arch conservative ambient society in which no significant evolution has ever occurred that was not forced from the outside. Naturally governments take a much wider and longer-term view of matters than the general public. They do so for the sake of social policy, political strategy, and as a feature of cultural disposition. On such grounds it may always be asked just how much government actually reflects the contemporary population? Hmm ... it’s a persistent problem. Having said all of that, foreigners regularly observe how - among those Japanese who shape the discourse - those right wingers and textbook publishers and politicians - Japan and its people are still framed as “weak” in the world, and at a disadvantage to other nations and peoples and, consistently, as the victim rather than the victimizer of the Pacific War. I think it highlights one of the national features that we might say characterizes the Japanese - moral obtuseness. Yes, they are patient and longsuffering. Yes, they are hard working. Yes, they are law abiding and clean. Yes, they are ingenious imitators and sly, opportunistic innovators. But they are also quite morally obtuse. Moral obtuseness is what Governor Ishihara is demonstrating when he laments the “atrocity” of the March 9th Tokyo bombing every spring. Japanese don’t have a monopoly on that, of course. Most people are morally obtuse. But ...
3. How these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions relate to the ethics of the atomic bomb’s use.
In light of this, the peace message during the annual August commemorations of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic weapons is compromised. In Japan the days (the 6th and the 9th) go largely ignored, except in those cities themselves, and by lip service from the national government for whom it’s a duty. There local politicians and visiting dignitaries must observe the duty of Peace worship with empty vows of “never again” because it has evolved into a drama with a life of its own. Elsewhere in the country those days are just days like any other. People’s complaints about the summer heat are usually the extent of their concern - especially now with the constant threat of power outages as a consequence of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster constantly looming. In other words, most Japanese do not care about Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s history of nuclear destruction. It is more than ancient history, and it’s not overwhelmingly relevant to contemporary lives. Now, in the wake of the March 11th earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster popular correlations of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the current state of the nuclear energy business does not well serve the positions of either anti-nuclear warhead pacifists, or anti-nuclear power environmentalists because it’s a correlation fallacy. But it’s an easy one.
Are you saying that you see my point that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a good thing, a life-saving decision to be proudly eulogized and celebrated as a right and proper strategy (in the context of the times) to force peace on a country - an evil country - that stubbornly resisted peace? Good. But I doubt that you agree.
You would have to ask Japanese if war was a necessity, since it is Japan that brought the war to America in 1941 in the first place. The conservative Japanese defense is that they are not to blame. War was forced on them by America’s act of aggression against them - the Roosevelt government’s decision to blockade petroleum shipments through the Straights of Singapore as a device to force Japan out of China - similar to the common use of sanctions today to persuade nations. But in the modern cases of Afghanistan and Iraq - or Vietnam, or Nicaragua, or Grenada, or Panama for that matter - we may properly ask to same of American politicians and retired politicians, diplomats and retired diplomats since it was America that brought war to those countries - illegally in every case, I might add.
But if you are asking about the efficacy or the justice of war at all, as an abstract idea divorced from any real-world examples of military actions that have been planned with forethought - especially unprovoked aggression executed with malice aforethought - I am persuaded to say, “No, war is never justified.” But that is a very ideal, academic debate, and an easy one to make in the absence of any real necessity to defend oneself or one’s fellows. Such debate might be said to be insulting nonsense in the real world outside the classroom.
The U.S. even prior to Dec 7, 1941 were involved with the same things Japan was involved in. So hello to Mr kettle.
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping
Canicattì massacre
Biscari massacre
Dachau massacre
Salina, Utah POW massacre
Rheinwiesenlager
American mutilation of Japanese war dead
Spanish–American War
Napituca Massacre
Mabila Massacre
Tiguex Massacres
Acoma Massacre
Jamestown Massacre
Mystic Massacre
Pavonia Massacre
And the list goes on. When is any form of destruction acceptable and justifiable? Never. But in combat, one needs to sue for peace. The morons here in the U.S. namely the teabaggers, hate Roosevelt and Truman with a passion, but gush when they bombed the Hell out of the Japs. Huh? This is the mindset from the right and I'm stuck in a country for whom idiots rule our nation.
Hooray for Hiroshima
ReplyDelete1. How the war is framed in popular discourse.
Every spring, on the March 9th anniversary of the U.S. incendiary bombing of Tokyo which initially killed more people (civilians) than the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, nationalist right wing head-up-his-ass Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara bemoans the “atrocity” of that event. I suppose he is obliged to do so, considering his job, but he is also prone to do so considering his personality.
I regularly ask what atrocity he is referring to? Is he referring to the atrocity of a war that Japan started in the first place? Or, is he referring to the atrocity of a war that Japan waged in a notoriously heinous and criminal fashion? Or, is he referring to the atrocity of a war that Japan stubbornly refused to give up long after its cause was lost? Because if it isn’t one of these, then I’m at a loss to understand him, and I suggest that he ought to return to school for some sincere education. (The Japanese are great fans of sincerity, especially fake sincerity as a social balm.)
I make these queries in the form of letters-to-the-editor of Japanese newspapers as well as letters directly to the Governor’s office in Shinjuku. Of course, I get no action, because the suggestions in my questions are incongruous with the spirit of the memory that is being cultivated. Or manufactured?
2. Why it is framed that way.
Young Japanese people today feel just as remote from the Second World War as young North Americans do. For young people today the first Gulf War isn’t even a distant memory. Even so, ghosts of the Pacific War linger and are still cultivated here not only by the right-wingers who regularly patrol Tokyo streets in their black, military ensign-bedecked vans, blaring mawkish antique ballads and well as marital tunes. They are also cultivated by conservative-leaning school textbook publishers, by a creaking and largely geriatric, male political class puffed up with the vulnerabilities of male ego, and by an arch conservative ambient society in which no significant evolution has ever occurred that was not forced from the outside.
Naturally governments take a much wider and longer-term view of matters than the general public. They do so for the sake of social policy, political strategy, and as a feature of cultural disposition. On such grounds it may always be asked just how much government actually reflects the contemporary population? Hmm ... it’s a persistent problem.
Having said all of that, foreigners regularly observe how - among those Japanese who shape the discourse - those right wingers and textbook publishers and politicians - Japan and its people are still framed as “weak” in the world, and at a disadvantage to other nations and peoples and, consistently, as the victim rather than the victimizer of the Pacific War. I think it highlights one of the national features that we might say characterizes the Japanese - moral obtuseness. Yes, they are patient and longsuffering. Yes, they are hard working. Yes, they are law abiding and clean. Yes, they are ingenious imitators and sly, opportunistic innovators. But they are also quite morally obtuse. Moral obtuseness is what Governor Ishihara is demonstrating when he laments the “atrocity” of the March 9th Tokyo bombing every spring. Japanese don’t have a monopoly on that, of course. Most people are morally obtuse. But ...
4. Why the U.S. has nothing to apologize for.
ReplyDeleteWe might accuse Americans who want to apologize for the Truman government’s decision to use atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945 as moral obtuseness as well. I think that much of the condemnation of the atomic weapons’ use is retroactive - people condemning them in light of subsequent understanding of radiation’s side effects, which doesn’t make the best argument. It might not help it at all, although it seems to sell well. My support for the bombings is in the spirit of the times in which they occurred: it was the quickest way to end the insane slaughter that Japan was responsible for bringing. Remember the three atrocities, that the Pacific War was 1) a war that it started in the first place; 2) a war that it waged in a heinous and criminal fashion; and, 3) a war that it refused to give it up long after its cause was lost. In other words, Japanese behavior forced the Americans’ hands. Thank goodness, too! President Truman was beloved for ending the war. Atomic weapons were weapons of peace, and they delivered. Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good.
It is a common canard to hear the argument that a blockade of the Japanese home islands could have / would have brought a quick and more peaceful end to the conflict, or that an offshore demonstration of the weapons’ power would have motivated a Japanese surrender. The rank stupidity of both these propositions is pathetic. They reflect the common error of underestimating a people’s determination to suffer for what they think is right, regardless of the veracity of their convictions, which is beside the point. Both Cuba and North Korea are contemporary examples. Of course the regimes in North Korea and Cuba will fall and change eventually, just as the Japanese militarist government would have eventually fallen and changed without Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction. But none of it for the supposed reasons.
I think America would have been blameless if it had used more atomic weapons - against Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and other major centers. What a terrible thing to say! But it’s true. It just happened that two weapons was the extent of its arsenal at the time. Lucky for Japan that it was, but considering how it waged its war arguments that it deserved annihilation were well received and entertained at the time. Only compassion and restraint - and a depleted atomic arsenal - stayed Washington’s hand, for which America deserves historic credit. First America defeated militarist Japan, and then it saved it. (Ironically, it seems that one of the best things for a country in the modern world is to be defeated by America.)
So, let’s not neglect the celebration of V-J Day, August 15th.
Or not.
2. Why it is framed that way.
ReplyDeleteYoung Japanese people today feel just as remote from the Second World War as young North Americans do. For young people today the first Gulf War isn’t even a distant memory. Even so, ghosts of the Pacific War linger and are still cultivated here not only by the right-wingers who regularly patrol Tokyo streets in their black, military ensign-bedecked vans, blaring mawkish antique ballads and well as marital tunes. They are also cultivated by conservative-leaning school textbook publishers, by a creaking and largely geriatric, male political class puffed up with the vulnerabilities of male ego, and by an arch conservative ambient society in which no significant evolution has ever occurred that was not forced from the outside.
Naturally governments take a much wider and longer-term view of matters than the general public. They do so for the sake of social policy, political strategy, and as a feature of cultural disposition. On such grounds it may always be asked just how much government actually reflects the contemporary population? Hmm ... it’s a persistent problem.
Having said all of that, foreigners regularly observe how - among those Japanese who shape the discourse - those right wingers and textbook publishers and politicians - Japan and its people are still framed as “weak” in the world, and at a disadvantage to other nations and peoples and, consistently, as the victim rather than the victimizer of the Pacific War. I think it highlights one of the national features that we might say characterizes the Japanese - moral obtuseness. Yes, they are patient and longsuffering. Yes, they are hard working. Yes, they are law abiding and clean. Yes, they are ingenious imitators and sly, opportunistic innovators. But they are also quite morally obtuse. Moral obtuseness is what Governor Ishihara is demonstrating when he laments the “atrocity” of the March 9th Tokyo bombing every spring. Japanese don’t have a monopoly on that, of course. Most people are morally obtuse. But ...
3. How these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions relate to the ethics of the atomic bomb’s use.
ReplyDeleteIn light of this, the peace message during the annual August commemorations of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic weapons is compromised. In Japan the days (the 6th and the 9th) go largely ignored, except in those cities themselves, and by lip service from the national government for whom it’s a duty. There local politicians and visiting dignitaries must observe the duty of Peace worship with empty vows of “never again” because it has evolved into a drama with a life of its own. Elsewhere in the country those days are just days like any other. People’s complaints about the summer heat are usually the extent of their concern - especially now with the constant threat of power outages as a consequence of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster constantly looming.
In other words, most Japanese do not care about Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s history of nuclear destruction. It is more than ancient history, and it’s not overwhelmingly relevant to contemporary lives. Now, in the wake of the March 11th earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster popular correlations of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the current state of the nuclear energy business does not well serve the positions of either anti-nuclear warhead pacifists, or anti-nuclear power environmentalists because it’s a correlation fallacy. But it’s an easy one.
I see your point and agree, is it because of the nuclear bomb that we protest or because of war? War is not a necessity. Ask an Iraqi or an Afghan.
ReplyDeleteSaturday, August 20, 2011.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that you see my point that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a good thing, a life-saving decision to be proudly eulogized and celebrated as a right and proper strategy (in the context of the times) to force peace on a country - an evil country - that stubbornly resisted peace? Good. But I doubt that you agree.
You would have to ask Japanese if war was a necessity, since it is Japan that brought the war to America in 1941 in the first place. The conservative Japanese defense is that they are not to blame. War was forced on them by America’s act of aggression against them - the Roosevelt government’s decision to blockade petroleum shipments through the Straights of Singapore as a device to force Japan out of China - similar to the common use of sanctions today to persuade nations. But in the modern cases of Afghanistan and Iraq - or Vietnam, or Nicaragua, or Grenada, or Panama for that matter - we may properly ask to same of American politicians and retired politicians, diplomats and retired diplomats since it was America that brought war to those countries - illegally in every case, I might add.
But if you are asking about the efficacy or the justice of war at all, as an abstract idea divorced from any real-world examples of military actions that have been planned with forethought - especially unprovoked aggression executed with malice aforethought - I am persuaded to say, “No, war is never justified.” But that is a very ideal, academic debate, and an easy one to make in the absence of any real necessity to defend oneself or one’s fellows. Such debate might be said to be insulting nonsense in the real world outside the classroom.
The U.S. even prior to Dec 7, 1941 were involved with the same things Japan was involved in. So hello to Mr kettle.
ReplyDeleteUnrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping
Canicattì massacre
Biscari massacre
Dachau massacre
Salina, Utah POW massacre
Rheinwiesenlager
American mutilation of Japanese war dead
Spanish–American War
Napituca Massacre
Mabila Massacre
Tiguex Massacres
Acoma Massacre
Jamestown Massacre
Mystic Massacre
Pavonia Massacre
And the list goes on. When is any form of destruction acceptable and justifiable? Never. But in combat, one needs to sue for peace. The morons here in the U.S. namely the teabaggers, hate Roosevelt and Truman with a passion, but gush when they bombed the Hell out of the Japs. Huh? This is the mindset from the right and I'm stuck in a country for whom idiots rule our nation.