I had my students in Riga Business School debate the atomic bombings using Kantian categorical imperative and utilitarian consequentialist ethics tools. I told them to articulate a Kantian yes and no, and a utilitarian yes and no. Are the atomic bombings a trolley problem or a fat man on the bridge problem? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem). For me a trolley problem.
In https://medium.com/exploring-history/wwii-mythbusting-tour-27faf81f0873 you can read the real back story to Japanese amnesia about its war crimes and how atomic victimhood fits into that organization of memory in the service of forgetting.
Japanese Delusions: The East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and Hiroshima Victimhood Fantasies
1: As in “maybe they only have one” atomic bomb. From the transcript of the August 9 meeting of Japanese ministers shortly before news of the bombing of Nagasaki was announced at this meeting. This news eliminated the last obstacle to Hirohito using the atomic bomb as political cover for unconditional surrender, though the emperor and his ministers were worried more about their positions. (Japan at War: An Oral History, Theodore Cook & Haruko Taya Cook, 1993)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/07/31/did-the-bomb-end-the-war
8/8/1945: The Soviets’ invasion of Manchuria, Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. The Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria meant that the Japanese could surrender quickly to just the Americans, or more slowly to Soviets invading Japan.
8/24/1945: The date of the Soviets’ planned invasion of Hokkaido.
8/22/1945: The date Stalin called off the Soviets’ Hokkaido invasion plan:
“On Aug. 16 the Soviet leader asked U.S. President Harry S. Truman to acquiesce in this “modest wish” or risk offending “Russian public opinion.” Although just months earlier, the U.S. War Department had considered letting the Soviets occupy Hokkaido and even part of Honshu, Japan’s largest island, Hiroshima had clearly changed things for Truman. Possession of a mighty new weapon gave Truman the confidence to set the terms of his relationship with Stalin. On Aug. 18, Truman bluntly turned Uncle Joe down. Stalin procrastinated, weighing the pros and cons. Two days before the planned Aug. 24 landing on Hokkaido, he called off the operation….the Americans had basically won the war in the Pacific. But, then, in his view, the Soviets had basically won the war in Europe, so if the Soviets could tolerate U.S. presence in Germany, why would the United States refuse to tolerate Soviet presence in Japan?” (https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/05/stalin_japan_hiroshima_occupation_hokkaido/)
Stalin Truman Potsdam WWII
Frenemies at Potsdam, July 27, 1945
5069–6759: Daily death rate in Japanese-occupied China, with the lower figure derived from the lowest estimated total of 15 million dead from July 1937 to August 1945. The higher figure is derived from the highest estimate of 20 million dead during the same eight year period.
456000–608000: Cost in Chinese war dead of delaying Japanese surrender by 90 days until the planned launch of Operation Olympic, the planned American invasion of Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.
140000: Number of Allied POWs in Japanese camps. Japan’s declared policy in case of an Allied invasion was to execute POWs.
5000000: American vehicle production in 1940.
26000: Japanese vehicle production in 1940.
7: Japanese aircraft carrier production during WWII.
100: American aircraft carrier production during WWII.
1.889 million: Number of Japanese troops in China (including Manchuria, Taiwan, Hong Kong) at war’s end.
10000: Number of aircraft in the Japanese air force on August 14, 1945.
12: Number of minutes it took for American torpedo bombers to sink four Japanese aircraft carriers.
2–4 million: Number of Indonesians starved and worked to death as slave laborers under Japanese “liberation” from Dutch colonialism.
$6800: US GDP per capita, 1930 (in 1990 $)
$1850: Japanese GDP per capita, 1930 (in 1990 $)
3:1: Estimated ratio of US to Japanese GDP per capita in 1940.
30000: Number of Koreans, mostly slave laborers, killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
10000: Number of Koreans killed in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
27 years: The time it took the Nagasaki city government to grant the Nagasaki Korean Residents’ Organization’s request for a memorial to the Korean forced laborers killed in the atomic bombing. First request was in 1994.
November 6, 2021: When the memorial was approved. (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/11/120_318315.html)
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/11/120_318315.html
The new monument is the result of 27 years of efforts by the ethnic Korean community in the southwestern Japanese city and the South Korean government. The first memorial stone to honour the forgotten Korean victims was erected in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 1970 by the Korean Residents Union in Japan and memorial services were held every year, but there had been no similar events in Nagasaki. To have a monument like one in Hiroshima, the local chapter of the pro-Seoul residents’ organization in Nagasaki in May 1994 asked the city to provide a site in the park for the monument, but the then Nagasaki Peace Park was under renovation, and its request was denied…..But the authorities did not approve it then, taking issue with its design, size and inscription that described the Koreans as victims of forced labour. (https://www.daijiworld.com/news/newsDisplay?newsID=890778)
211: Number of Chinese killed by two Japanese officers in a beheading contest in Nanjing in December 1937. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword
The 13 December 1937 article in the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun’s Contest to kill 100 people using a sword series. Mukai (left) and Noda (right). The bold headline reads, ‘Incredible Record’ — Mukai 106–105 Noda — Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword)
300,000: Chinese civilians killed in the Rape of Nanjing from December 1937 to March 1938, an orgy of mass murder, rape and plunder that many in positions of power in Japan deny happened.
2: The number of NHK (Nippon Telecom) board members, chairman included, who openly voice revisionist history about war crimes that in Germany, Austria and France would get them arrested and imprisoned like the Holocaust denier David Irving:
“The latest wrench in China-Japan relations comes courtesy of author Naoki Hyakuta. Hyakuta, who is currently a governor of the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), made comments denying the Nanjing Massacre, one of the most inflammatory historical legacies left over from Japan’s invasion of China during World War II.
According to The Asahi Shimbun, Hyakuta made his remarks in a February 3 speech, while campaigning for Toshio Tamogami, a right-wing candidate for Tokyo governor. In his speech, Hyakuta presented views of World War II generally in line with a far right-wing stance that absolves Japan of responsibility. “In 1938, Chiang Kai-shek tried to publicize Japan’s responsibility for the Nanking Massacre, but the nations of the world ignored him. Why? Because it never happened,” Hyakuta said. He also posited that the Tokyo war crimes trials were a sham “conducted to cover up those [U.S.] atrocities,” referring to the fire-bombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hyakuta did admit that “during wars, some military personnel may have done cruel acts” but he quickly added “that is not something only the Japanese have done.” He also argued, “There is no reason to teach such things to children who are still in compulsory education. I want to first teach children what a wonderful nation Japan is.”
NHK Chairman Katsuto Momii….indicated that he would like the broadcaster to align its programming with the government’s stance on territorial disputes. He also downplayed the issue of “comfort women,” saying that all countries at the time had used similar practices.”(https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/nhk-governor-nanjing-massacre-never-happened/)
Forgive the added narrative to contextualize some of the Japanese numbers. The depths of delusion in Japan two generations after war’s end made this necessary. Other combatant nations are no less deluded about their own histories. Only the content of the delusion changes. The defeated and occupied are deluded by martyrology and resistance fantasies and those on the Axis side by whataboutism and victimhood by Allied bombing or German occupation after switching sides (Italy). The one exception to these narcissistic delusions, irony of ironies, is Germany. The martyrological exception to the German exception lives in Dresden. But that’s a separate story inextricably linked to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bad vs worse conundrum. Maybe Studs Terkel’s The Good War should be retitled The Bad vs Worse War.
