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[Blackace]

Saved lives of American soldiers at the cost of many many Japanese civilian people. Does it compute?

Yeah. Well the firebombings of Tokyo killed more people than both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it would have just have gotten worse.. A landwar would have cost many more lives on both sides. Okinawa is a great example of how badly it would have turned out.

Japan was in the process of working with the Soviet Union to act as a mediator to the other nations for their surrender before the first bomb dropped. And besides, it's not like the United States gave Japan any warning that they were about to use nuclear weapons on them. In fact, any mention of the atomic bomb was specifically left out of the Potsdam Declaration.

I am not trying to excuse the Nanking Massacre in any way. I agree that nothing can excuse it. However, I think the same logic should be applied to the atomic bombs and all the other mass-murders throughout history. I only "blast" Chang's book, because it is completely sensationalist, full of fallacies and historical innacuracies, yet it is the only "popular" piece of literature on the subject in the Western world. The mere fact that she took pictures from old Japanese newspapers and publications and completely changed their titles and explanations to fit her agenda just destroys any credibility she may have had.

I haven't brought up unit 731, but you are welcome to discuss if you think it is relevant. The horrible deeds committed by that unit and others are of course inexcusable as well.

I'm not sure if Emperor Yoshihito had bad intentions or not, but he was only in charge of things from 1912 - 1919, so I do not know how much influence he had. Most of the atrocities in Korea occured during the war period of 1939 - 1945 anyway, so if any of the emperors deserves blame it would be Emperor Hirohito, in my opinion.

Yoshihito can't be blamed because of his poor mental state but from the moment he took over the throne the Emperor lost power and it fell into the hands of the military who wanted nothing more than to expand at the cost of all humanity...

As for warnings Japan would be the last to complain about not getting warnings or giving warnings. At least they knew they were being attacked unlike Pearl Harbor. And they went to Russia with the hope that Russia would help broker a deal with the States to keep them out. They did not want to unconditionally surrender, and again I don't defend Nagasaki, becuase a surrender was indeed forthcoming, but Hiroshima ended the war quicker than any other way.

731 I think has deep meaning in the relationship Japan has with China and the rest of Asia. Japan still denies that these units operated, even with proof that they did. While Japan has put a lot of money (not without returns as well) into both Korea and China. The government has never really owned up to the damage they have caused. So here we are aguring over a tiny bit a rocks that can barely be called an island.

Koreans are in no way fully innocence as well. Their education system has been in full Japanese are evil bastards since the end of WWII and no one has said "hey wait a second!" to them. Japan's education system does omit a lot what they indeed did do during WWII... but it no longer teaches hate..