A Japanesese politican, Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, made the following comment recently...
...the dropping of an atomic bomb on Japan by the United States during World War II was was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday.
"I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
That is a completely valid statement, especially when examined in the context of Japan in 1945, not 2007. But people have a hard time thinking rationally about the use of atomic weapons...
Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors.
"The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of victims living in Tokyo. "It's outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim."
Japan is a victim? Uh, Japan was the aggressor here. The Japanese were seeking to conquer the Pacific, and they were the ones who attacked Pearl Harbor. They were the ones to participated in war crimes in China and Korea. Japanese soldiers were the ones bayoneting Americans on the Bataan Death March.
The atomic bomb was horrific and I hope we never have to use them again, but it ended the war that the Japanese started and likely saved more lives (American AND Japanese) than would have been lost in a conventional bombing campaign and a ground war. I would also argue that the horror of nuclear weapons prevented the Cold War from turning into a shooting war and World War III. It is high time that people in Japan, America and around the world stop perpetuating the myth that the Japanese were just minding their own business when the evil American imperialists dropped a couple of atomic bombs on them without provocation.
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